


Mr. Punch, You're Coming With Me!

by bentsage



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Multiple Love Interests, Original Character(s), Torture, friendly monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-02-08 12:52:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12864891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bentsage/pseuds/bentsage
Summary: "Look – I was gonna leave that shithole with or without you," Jude tells Punch, "But – I could've helped you sooner and I didn't.  And I feel like shit about it, so let me make it up to you.  After that, you can do whatever the hell you want, okay?"A scavver-turned-raider meets a captive super mutant and finds that friendships are best formed while running from your problems.  A story about a couple of OCs named after a terrible set of puppets, where a fumbled touchdown leads to more than just the end of the line.





	1. Fumble

**Author's Note:**

> I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON THIS FOR/EVER/. The story is mostly finished, aside from an epilogue to be written, so I'll post the chapters as they're done being edited. I'm really fond of Fallout's lore, and the worldbuilding possibilities are endless, so I decided to make a couple of OCs to test things out. These guys are near and dear to my heart, a bunch of dumb buffoons just trying to make their way in life.
> 
> If you read and enjoy, I'd appreciate kudos or comments! Also, consider tracking this story until it's marked complete, as my posting schedule might be really fast (or really sporadic, let's be real). I hope to do more with these characters, but I needed to get the background out before I could launch into weed farms, secret comic bunkers and, you know, feral ghouls, deathclaws and yao guai. (am i the only one who always types it yaoi guy first??)

He isn't as strong as his brothers are.  Strong enough to survive, yes, but survival isn't the thing that makes a good super mutant.  What makes them strong isn't living - it's taking, it's commanding, it's throwing themselves into battles without concern for life or limb.  Surviving is barely strength – it's the lowest requirement of all living things.  Survival is cautious, and caution is for weak creatures like molerat babies and humans.  The strength his brothers wield is wild and reckless, unhesitating, tampering their own survival instincts in a way that doesn't come naturally to him.  No matter how much the battle rages, no matter how strong his inclinations to violence are, he cannot ignore the hesitation of survival.  He cannot help but feel fear in his gut when a bullet grazes too closely.  He cannot help the way his feet force him out of danger.

His purpose - the purpose of all of his brothers - is not to survive.  And if he cannot force himself out of hiding, out of running, then there is only one option left to him.

He's reminded of that last resort now, in the heat of battle with a group of pathetic meatbags wielding pipe pistols and chained bats.  He knows that he must go through with this.  Even now he wonders if he's ready for it.  A master runs two fingers up the bomb casing, red lights following the touch, and honorably passes it over with the trigger out.  When he feels it finally settle in his hand, it is heavy and warm.  Secure.  The best last thing to feel.  There is no more choice - he is ready.  He has to be.

The beeping begins.  One of his brothers slaps him on the back and he begins to move, walking for several steps before he spots the largest cluster of frail humans encroaching on their ever-expanding territory.  His feet pick up speed without thought – his brothers howl as he passes, pacing into a jog that carries him ever forward.  His feet are steady in these last moments of his life, as steady as his heartbeat.  The fears that come to him after restless sleep are nowhere to be found.  The bomb fills him with confidence - with faith - its warmth, its beeping reminding him that this is his glorious moment.  This is the moment he turns his world to ashes and does what all super mutants do best.  Finally, he will know what his brothers all seem to instinctively understand.

The humans scream and run at the sight and sound of him.  He revels in their fear, thinking he might finally understand the thrill of battle, the countdown blaring, louder and louder as his muscles contract, ready at any moment, hoping to feel the press of the button beneath his fingers before the nuclear blast wipes him off the face of the planet –

A gunshot registers distantly in his ears.  Then, all at once, the countdown ends, the beep abruptly silenced, his pace staggering as he looks down and marvels at his newly missing limb, the arm he'd been clutching the bomb with shot clean off by hooting, hollering human scum –

He has never been as strong as his brothers.  He fails to keep upright, unable to resist the heavy blood loss or the dizzying sensation of complete and utter failure.  He crashes to the asphalt, gasping for air only because his body can't simply stop breathing, no matter how much he wishes to suffocate on his own blood.  A human voice reaches his ears, carried over the heat of battle, shouting, "Did you see that!  Look, blew its arm clean off!"  Beyond, he can hear his brothers demanding to know what happened.  They can't imagine why the bomb wouldn't detonate.  Until now, he had never considered it wouldn't.

The world fades in and out, becoming a hazy mess of gunfire and bright lights.  And pain.  He has never experienced pain like this – maybe no super mutant has.  And yet he continues to breathe, to survive his blood loss and the overwhelming sense of failure that echoes in every aching gasp for air.  As the firefight dies off, leaving him alive past his usefulness, all he can hear is his own wet breathing.

A human crows nearby, "There it is!"  The battle is over – his brothers must have lost for there to still be humans left, and he knows their failure is on his own head.  Their deaths, every one of them, are his responsibility.  His fault.

A foot collides with his side and he grunts, swamped in agony as the human shouts, "It's still alive!"

"Should we, uh..."

There's a beat.  For the first time, he hopes for some form of mercy - all it would take is one bullet.

"You know what?  I got a way better idea."

* * *

Jude never goes on raids.  Well, sometimes she does, when they need someone malnourished enough to fit through cracks in walls or old vents.  Otherwise, she's a shit shot and gets dizzy at the sight of blood, so usually, she stays behind with the home team, such as it is – older folks who are more prone to defending their turf than expanding it, mostly.  At twenty-three years old, Jude is too pale, gangly and sick looking, even by chemhead standards, and has never been the first choice when it comes to mouths to feed.  These guys tolerate her, but she knows they don't _like_ her.  Truth be told, she doesn't like them much either, but it's not as though she has many options or safe places to stay.

Besides, they always bring back something worth the effort, and nobody ever tells her she doesn't get a share of the food, caps or drugs because she wasn't out in the thick of it.  Even now, she can hear the raiding party on the return, boisterous with a probably hard-won victory, and she's almost as eager as the rest to see what they've brought back home.  Everyone in the camp runs at least partially on low-key hostility with one another, but returning raiding parties bring out the most community within their block-by-block fortress.

Something changes in the accumulating crowd; Jude notices it as she circles behind some hovels to get a better eye on the gates.  The raiding party is shouting a load of shit she can't make out, except she thinks she hears one of them say "prisoner," which isn't something Jude ever expected from these scavvers turned raiders.  She's not sure she's ready to be part of a group of kidnappers.

They drag the super mutant behind them in a net like any other carcass, hooting and hollering as they parade the block, like boys with a pig's head on a stick.  A dark splotch begins to form under the mutant where they finally drop the bag.  It's missing its right arm, the skin ragged around the wound and blood oozing from the meat, staining the concrete.  A crowd soon forms that pushes Jude back before she can properly commit the horrendousness of the image to memory, but she's got a good enough imagination to make up for it.  She's seen kids torturing animals for sport before and it looked a lot like this does right now – and animal torture has never ended well for anybody, as far as she knows.

The nagging sensation that these guys are _way_ more fucked up than she already thought returns with a vengeance.  She's gonna have to make a decision about them soon.  Not right now, obviously, not as the pay is being doled out, but someday pretty soon she's going to have to choose to fall in line or get the hell out.

"Still can't believe it didn't go off!" Henry is modestly bragging, loud enough for pretty much everyone to hear. "You should've seen it."

"Picked the _wrong_ football, didn't ya?" somebody else says.  Jude hears the mutant grunt in pain and can only imagine how many people must be fucking with it right now.  It might as well be roadkill at this point.  Jude knows she has enough Jet to help her ignore how shitty that makes her feel as she counts out her "share" of the loot, but it won't be a comforting thought until she's high.  She can see that the camp is gearing up for another horrific booze fest, so she decides it's time to get while the getting's good.

She retreats to her bag in one of the hovels rigged together on the street, the electric sizzle of a cattle prod echoing after her.  Just a few hours, she thinks.  It's the least that monster deserves, anyway.

With super mutants at the forefront of her mind, it's no wonder that her mind turns to her family as the world bleeds into a slow, Jet-induced haze.  The small homestead she'd lived on for as long as she could remember had been outmatched by the greenskin raiding party that had stumbled across them.  With only four families of farmers (and her, of course, the one chemhead good-for-nothing whose only positive quality had been that she didn't strain resources), they hadn't stood a chance.

Jude hadn’t even been home when the greenskins attacked.  She'd been out in the woods getting high with her then-boyfriend, far enough away that the twin eight-year-olds living next door wouldn't come snooping and find them.  She hadn't even known what was happening until they'd walked back to the homestead, only to find it in ruined cinders, pillaged and burned like the best of them.  There weren't a lot of parts left to identify who had been killed, but that was enough to tell them there were no survivors.

They had run away together after that, just like Jude had always hoped they would, although she'd maybe hoped her parents would be alive too.  They salvaged whatever they could and left, hiking out into the woods they knew so well, finding the old summer shack that had once been a park ranger's office and holing up there because, well... what else was there to do?  Everyone was gone.  Her parents were dead – so were his – the crops were ruined and so they had nothing to make money off.  There had been so much blood in her parents' room that Jude still can't believe it, thinking back on it six months later.

Eventually, she'd woken up and her then-boyfriend was gone; she waited for three days, then five, then seven.  That's when she had realized there was nothing left for her there, or in the woods, or at home – so she'd started towards Diamond City.  It was the only place her mind could suggest, the only place she'd ever been to, even if it'd been when she was too young to remember the trip.  All she had wanted was somewhere safe to sleep, to be surrounded by people and able to dose herself freely.  It was all she could think about finding for days – just a burrow to hide in, somewhere safe where she could try and forget the waking nightmare her life had become.

Instead of Diamond City, she'd found the Untamed.  They hadn't been called that at the time – they weren't called anything back then, really.  They had just been a group of scavengers who had built themselves a little bunker between two low-rise buildings.  Jude stopped with them to trade some caps for water, and then a few more caps for some Jet, and the next thing she knew, she was helping them get access to a blocked off room by shimmying through a crack in the wall and clearing the boards from the other side.

From there, she sort of just... hung around.  Diamond City had just been a distant pipe dream – she knew then as well as she knows now that she would've never made it all the way there alone, but at least the scavengers didn't mind her getting high while working, and their leader seemed to know how to use a gun, how to keep people safe.  Henry was tall, broad-shouldered and yet somehow knob-kneed, and he was assertive and knew how to get the best results.  By the time Jude had joined them, she'd only just started to realize how weird they were with Henry in charge.

Nowadays, though, they definitely aren't just a group of scavvers looking for scrap metal to sell.  Somewhere along the way, their little encampment had grown into a veritable fortress, and instead of a half-dozen people, Henry has almost twenty raiders listening to his orders and doing whatever he says.  It's not really a surprise in hindsight that he turned into such a dick.  A psychotic dick, at that.  He's probably the reason they're called the Untamed now - because he's a fucking lunatic, firing off at all cylinders, too full of himself to rein it in before he gets them all killed.

She never really knows how long her highs last – Jet is specially tailored to make time absolutely meaningless, which is her favorite part about it.  All she knows is that at some point, the world begins to catch up to her as she watches people from her hovel, their laughing and chattering and fighting coming back to her in slow inches.  The comedown is pretty great, unlike most other drugs – Jet just takes you out of time for a few short minutes (or half an hour, or an hour, she's never sure just how long) and then puts you right back where you left off.  You're even mostly the same as before you tripped.

It's been three hours, she finds out, since the raiding party returned.  Despite what she'd assumed earlier, she can still hear distant shouts and groans of pain.  The mutant doesn't seem to be giving in or giving up.  She can hear people taunting it, even this far out of its earshot.  She's beginning to feel sick, and not just because she's forgotten to eat.  It just doesn't feel right, keeping it around like this just to fuck with it.  At this point, it's bordering on cruel.  She's been willing to give Henry the benefit of the doubt for a while now, but tonight is seriously degrading her trust in this entire operation.

She decides to talk to Henry about it while she's still a little fast.  It's a bad idea – worse because the mutant is _his_ trophy, and she's about to bring the party down around it – but just seeing it from the balcony, even as far away as it was, is... it's too much.  This crew had always seemed a little unhinged, but this amount of outright torture is too close to what the super mutants do themselves.  It'd be better just to shoot it, put it out of everyone's misery.

Henry, like she suspects, isn't keen on letting the fun end anytime soon.  "You want me to put it down because it makes you a little nauseous?" he asks, his tone dripping with the kind of bitter, masculine patronization that makes Jude's hands ball up into fists.  If only he wasn't armed to the teeth and covered by two strung out freaks – if only she weren't such a coward, she'd show him a thing or two about talking down to her.

"This isn't what I joined up for!" she snaps, scowling up at him.  Henry likes having a platform in his bigger-than-everyone's shack; he says it makes him feel powerful.  Jude suspects he's just paranoid about being looked down on.

Henry sneers, angry and condescending all in one.  "No, _you_ joined up because you're a pathetic tweaker who was too poor to buy chems and too weak to muscle your way into some caps.  Well, you got the Jet, the caps, a full stomach – and now what?  You're gonna be some holier-than-thou bitch about it, just because you got enough to be comfortable?  _Yeah_."  His laugh is more of a bark, spit flecking the corner of his mouth as he looms up over her.  Jude steps back instinctively, hating herself for it and hating him even more as he grins triumphantly.  "You think you're better than us?  You go ahead and fuck off.  See how tomorrow's hangover works for you without us around to soften the blow."

Henry's girlfriend Sophie, strung out and only half-aware of what the fuck's actually going on, releases a throaty laugh.  "So, Jude," she coos, "What's it gonna be?"

 


	2. Escaping the Camp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jude decides to leave the Untamed - and circumstances encourage her to bring a friend along, too.

She chooses to stay. Of fucking _course_ she does – she shuts right the fuck up and floats with some Day Tripper while the crew works itself up into a frenzy, the fight drained out of her. They didn't lose anyone in the raid and now they've got something to show for it, and she'd mostly just wanted to ruin the fun. Jude tries not to think of the super mutant bleeding out in the cage, but it's hard when everyone who passes her spot by is talking about it. When they use the cattle prod on it, she can hear it howl from across the compound.

The frenzy turns into a party when three of the crew return with beer. It's a real fucking rager – the music is loud, people are shouting and laughing, fights are breaking out over petty fights that can only be recalled after a few beers... Interspersed with all the celebration, Jude can hear the sharp crackle-pop of the cattle prod. She tries not to worry about it. The mutant's probably going to die soon, she figures, and then it won't even be a problem; it'll just be another thing that she decided not to have anything to do with. She just has to remain neutral until it fucking dies.

She already knows she's way past neutral, but she tries hard to pretend otherwise. And anyway, why should she be so concerned? Super mutants are the reason she's in this mess with the Untamed in the first place! She should be glad to get a chance to see one feel a fraction of the pain she felt the day her family was wiped out. Hell, she should be down there poking holes in it herself. Instead, she's –

What _is_ she doing?

Her feet have carried her closer to the center of camp than she'd wanted to go. The smell here is pretty bad – the metallic smell of blood and sharp electric stench of burned flesh mix with the smell of grilling molerat, and it churns her stomach pretty bad, even with all the pills. The grill is positioned near the cage, probably to show the greenskin what it's missing. The cage itself is partially tipped forward, caught in a pothole and secured by a thick chain from the top to a nearby fire escape. It makes it hard for the mutant to do more than lay flat against the bars, where someone is always ready to stab it with the prod or hit it with a meat mallet. The point above its elbow where its arm had been severed is jagged and partially cauterized. The rest of it looks battered and bruised, blood dripping from knife wounds that rip its skin from shoulder to gut. Jude can see, even from here, the way its body shakes with every painful breath.

Jude spends a lot longer watching than she thought she'd be capable of. For all of the things she might be willing to do in the Commonwealth, she can't stand the scene of mindless torture in front of her. In the back of her mind, something is starting to take shape – she's not sure if it's a decision, or a plan, or just a lot of crackpot ideas that are going to disappear the next time she floods her system with more chems. It's that thought that reminds her that she still has plenty left back in her footlocker, and she turns back to her hovel, reluctant to leave but honestly sick at the thought of staying any longer.

She'd been out of her hovel longer than she'd thought, the passage of time being weird as shit when she's high and facing a moral dilemma she just wants to ignore. When she gets back, it takes a startlingly long time for her to realize that all of her shit's been torn through. It isn't until she sees her burnt Grognak comic shredded on top of her bed that she realizes someone has come through her space and taken – well, taken _what_?

She spends some few minutes in a panic as she tries to figure out just what was stolen. She's relieved to find a handful of chems still left under her mattress. Her stash of caps and three pairs of stitched pants are gone, plus the Jet inhaler she'd left on top of the table. Some odds and ends, and the two boxes of Fancy Lads she'd been saving for later have also disappeared. Her pillow and mattress have been shredded with a knife.

Jude stands on top of her mattress, the things left behind all piled on the table. Those random pipe dreams and theoretical ideas from before start to swirl into something more realistic, something less likely to have the entire camp come down on her with bullets in every chamber. This is a final warning – Henry clearly is tired of her shit, and if she can't escape the compound before he finds her - well, shit. That just is _not_ an option.

She throws all of her shit into a beat up backpack, pausing only to duct tape up a hole at the bottom of the satchel before loading in her chems, a few caps the gang had missed, a couple of stimpaks she'd hidden under the floorboards, a beat up silver lighter, and finally a couple of worn out, burned out comics. They'd also missed her pistol, hidden with the stimpaks, but they took most of her ammo. The junk she's been collecting and the things that are too big for her bag are getting left behind in favor of a quick escape. She hates leaving anything behind, but there's nothing she can do about it.

Knowing Henry, he'll be sweeping the camp for her, and if he's particularly inclined he might've already told everybody to be on the lookout. The fastest way out of the camp includes going through the same open area the mutant's being held – as much as she doesn't want to go that way, she knows better than to try and take her time sneaking out.

The party is enough to keep most everybody distracted, and Jude desperately attempts to act nonchalant as she wanders casually towards the exit as fast as she can. She has to stop and talk with a few people as she goes - mostly pulled in by raiders she doesn't recognize, who shrug her off when she acts like she doesn't know shit about anything they're talking about. At least she knows none of these people were the ones who tore up her stuff.

There are a few people, people she _does_ know, who give her a wary eye as she passes them. A guy who goes by Roadie stares at her, and as she stares back, she begins to realize that the amount of people around has significantly decreased. Roadie doesn't say anything to her, but she really doesn't like the way he licks his lips, and she quickly moves on before he decides to confront her. He, like some of the older members of the gang, definitely know Henry is out for her blood. She doesn't know why they're letting her go when she's clearly in a bid for freedom. She doesn't know why there doesn't seem to be anybody around as she approaches the mutant's cage. She doesn't like not knowing either of those things, but most of all, she doesn't like the idea of being caught by Henry, and so she pushes aside her worry and picks up her pace.

It turns out, Henry is spending some quality alone time with the super mutant. Jude almost walks into the open space before she hears his drunken laugh, and she quickly ducks behind a pillar of the building facing the street. She breathes through her mouth and tries to force her heart to slow down, praying that he didn't see her.

"You muties all think you're so much better'n us," Henry slurs. Jude stays pinned behind the pillar, not daring to move – if he hadn't seen her, she doesn't want to give him another chance. He's mid-rant, his voice not loud enough to cover the super mutant's labored breathing. "You think you all can just, come within spittin' distance of us humans, an' you don't even expect nobody to retaliate? How dumb do you gotta be?"

Jude finally risks another look. She sees an upturned barrel with a bunch of tools spread across it, with Henry perusing it like it's a market stall and not a tray of torture devices. He picks up a pair of pliers, and Jude swallows so heavily she's sure he had to have heard him. He doesn't, thankfully for her, but that means that she's going to have to see what he's going to do next. He puts the pliers back and picks up a meat tenderizer instead, testing the weight with exaggerated movements. Jude is very sure she doesn't want to get anywhere near him and that hammer.

The super mutant looks weary as Henry weighs the two instruments he's picked out, finally picking the pliers. The barrel has been here the whole time, and Jude can imagine the mutant is familiar with all the pieces. Despite herself, a real surge of sympathy rushes through her – she wouldn't wish any of this on her worst enemy. Hell, super mutants _are_ her worst enemy - but this is fucking awful. She can't believe that she's lived around these monsters for as long as she has - she can't believe she hadn't seen it coming, and now she can't believe that she wishes she could do _something_ to help the super mutant in the cage.

"You think somebody's comin' for you?" Henry asks, oblivious to the fact that he has an audience and yet still managing to be a theatrical dick about it. "You think we ain't killed all of your pals before we dragged you back here?" When the mutant doesn't respond, Henry reaches up and shakes the bars. The pliers clang against the metal. "Even if we _didn't_ , you think they'd come get a weak son of a bitch like you?"

The mutant's silence is all Henry gets. Even when Henry twists its arm, bending its wrist the wrong way against the bars, fixing the pliers around its middle finger – even then, it does nothing more than grunt. It looks so tired.

"Answer me, you shit-for-brains!" Henry shouts. At this angle, Jude can't see its expression, but she can see the way its arm twitches as Henry applies pressure.

She doesn't hear it say anything, but Henry sure seems to. "That's fuckin' right," he declares triumphantly. "Not a no-one gives a molerat's ass about you, you hunk of mutated meat." The mutant groans as Henry crushes its finger; Jude has to clamp her hands over her mouth to keep from shouting. How can it just – _tolerate_ that? How is it still _alive_?

Jude's blood is rushing past her ears so loudly that she almost doesn't hear when Henry calls her by name. "That little bitch Jude is the only one who even squeaked about you. Well, don't expect her to do anythin' about it! The most help she's gonna be to you is as a meal when I find her." He puts the pliers down and steps back from the cage to admire the view. "That stupid bitch has been getting real fucking holier-than-thou lately. I'm gonna kill her before she gets any more stupid ideas."

_Too late,_ Jude thinks, as a stupid idea comes to mind, her eyes falling on a broken, jagged-edged two-by-four lying on the ground behind Henry.

"But hey. Maybe she'll get lucky." Henry lifts the knife with fascination, weighing it in his hand before taking a firmer grip. "Maybe you'll die _before_ we find her. But, I wouldn't count on it."

He looks so enthralled by what he's planning to do that Jude decides it's now or never – she paces her steps carefully, creeping out from her cover as he advances on the super mutant. She can see the mutant looking at her, just as she reaches the board; she doesn't have time to explain her plan but she hopes it understands what an ambush looks like.

"Lucky," the super mutant grunts.

Henry laughs in its face. "Don't get used to that word, you sorry piece of shit, because you ain't _got_ any luck left –"

Jude pulls the board up and back, then swings with all of her might. Her weapon sweeps through the air, connecting against Henry's temple with a meaty _thunk_. He makes a terrible gurgling sound of surprise, wheels forward from the impact, and collapses to the ground.

She stares up into the cage, chest heaving, her legs going weak as she locks eyes with the super mutant. Its eyes are black, with blown out pupils, probably strung out on Med-X to keep it up for Henry's fucking monologue, and its expression is dark and unreadable. She avoids its stare by looking at the blood matting down Henry's hair and covering the end of her board.

_Fuck_ , she wonders to herself, _Is he dead?_

She doesn't have time to check for a pulse so all she can do is hope she hasn't murdered him, turning the board onto the padlock. It breaks before the lock does, and so she uses the meat tenderizer to finish the job, her hands shaking the entire time.

When the lock finally gives, the barred door has nothing left to hold it in place and swings forward, slamming against the asphalt once it's halfway open. The super mutant sags out of the cage, managing to land on its feet as it staggers from its prison. With its amputated arm at eye-level now, Jude can see the raw, angry welting, and the deep dark color in the veins still attached to the burned skin. Before she can react, it reaches out with its good hand and grabs her by the throat.

_No!_ she thinks, panic washing over her in a white-hot wave, kicking out her legs. She grabs its wrist, tries to pull its fingers from her neck, but it only bears down harder, fury written in its blown-out eyes and its bared teeth. She gags, reaching into her bag, scrambling for anything, anything at all that could help -

Her hand brushes across a syringe, and she has the stupidest idea she's had all night. As her ears start to ring from all the blood rushing to her head, she pulls out the needle and jams it straight into the arm holding her in the air. The greenskin snarls and drops her, yanking the syringe from its arm; its eyes flick over the Stimpak in hand, and confusion begins to spread over its features. It furrows its brow at her.

"I'm Jude," she rasps, massaging her tender neck. Its gaze flickers over Henry's body, and she looks too, before jumping to her feet as she realizes the enormity of what she's just done. "This is a rescue," she says.  When it doesn't move, she shouts, "We have to go!"

That seems to do the trick. As soon as she begins to move, it follows her. It keeps close behind, although the super mutant's pace is severely hindered by its brutalized body and serious blood loss. It staggers into a wall at one point, hissing through its teeth, and although Jude is too small to be of any real help, she ducks under its intact arm and helps steady it as best she can. It doesn't seem to recognize the gesture, but she helps keep it balanced against the wall. No alarms are going off yet – nobody seems to have noticed Henry's absence, but that's not really surprising considering how drunk and stoned everyone is. Soon enough, someone will go to find Henry (hopefully not dead), but with any luck, they'll have enough time to escape through the chained alley exit near the back of the camp.

They _just_ reach the door when she picks up on several people shouting all at once. The chain is held in place by a lock that takes her about half a minute to pick, and by that time the super mutant's every muscle has tensed for a fight beside her. The door swings open with a maliciously loud creak. Jude tries not to waste too much more time pulling the mutant out of the camp and into the pitch black alleyway; once they're through, she heaves her entire bodyweight against one of the near-empty dumpsters close to the door. The mutant picks up on her plan and lends its own weight. The rusted wheels shriek in protest but the dumpster finally moves, and together they push the dumpster into the gate, blocking it for at least long enough for them to escape.

Even though she's not sure where to go next, Jude finds herself leading the way as fast as the battered mutant can stand. A few turns down different side streets make it look like it's abandoned her in favor of finding its own escape route, but it always rounds the corner after her. She waits until they're several blocks away to slow her pace, and then another two blocks go by before she finds a semi-intact warehouse sitting abandoned behind an old world marketplace. They hadn't gone in a straight line, instead weaving and ducking through alleyways and even through a few buildings, and Jude figures it's probably okay to stop here, at least for a little while.

The door is locked, with no signs of anyone having come by for a few years. Jude makes short work of the door with a bent bobby pin, but she doesn't go in immediately. First, she listens for any sign of animals or feral ghouls, and when she lets the door swing wide with a creak, she listens again for any movement. The super mutant, despite being the kind of creature to blindly rush in and raze homesteads, makes no move forward. It doesn't even seem annoyed that she's being so cautious - it's almost like it's waiting for the coast to be clear, too.

Nothing inhabits the warehouse, which is great. It's got a working lock, thanks to Jude's careful work, and there's all sorts of junk to shape into a decent barricade on top of that. There's a giant hole in the roof, going up three stories to the clear sky, but the foundation still seems okay. It probably won't collapse. ...She hopes it won't collapse, anyway.

"Okay," she says at last, standing with the mutant inside a locked, relatively secure warehouse. The super mutant is unsteady on his feet, and Jude gestures towards a pile of crates and cardboard boxes that could probably count as a bed for something as big as it. "Go sit," she says. It glares at her, and she thinks that maybe this is the part where it kills her, but it eventually turns and staggers to the crates.

With the mutant problem at least temporarily solved, Jude drops her bag by a couple of barrels and takes a look around. There are workbenches, crates, barrels, and bags of sand - everything a girl could need to fortify a safe space. At least her luck got her this far; now, she pulls on her gloves and prepares to do some work of her own.


	3. A Night Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jude and Punch take a breather in a warehouse, but it looks like Punch isn't out of the woods yet.

After a solid hour of hauling around heavy objects, Jude has managed to barricade the door and seal up a couple of weak points in the walls, where maybe molerats used to come in through.  She finds a couple of useful items in all the wreckage - a sleeping bag, another roll of duct tape, and even a couple of Mentats rolling around in the bottom of a lunch pail.  Once she's piled her findings together with her bag, she takes stock of the area and decides it's getting too dark to go without a fire.  There's a sturdy, long-empty oil drum near the pile of crates the mutant is resting on that will probably do the job.

The mutant watches her the entire time she works.  It's either unwilling or unable to pass out.  It could probably use another Stimpak, but hopefully, by tomorrow, it'll be ready to find its way back to its... family, or whatever.  Jude's aware that it isn't a lost radstag faun, but it's the closest comparison she can make considering that she never planned this far ahead.

For now, she settles for dropping two stimpaks on the crate between them, making a show of the gesture to indicate that they're for the greenskin to use.  "You need them more than I do," she says.  It squints at her suspiciously, but she's freezing and this fire isn't going to make itself, so she gives up on the staring contest fast.  With a little wooden debris, some old newspapers and her lighter, starting a fire is probably the easiest thing she's done all day.

When the super mutant finally speaks, it shocks her enough to cause her to jump.  "Human," it growls, "Why help me?"

She had almost forgotten that mutants can speak – or, at least, that this particular one can.  Never in her wildest imagination would she have thought up having a conversation with a super mutant.  She whirls around to face it, watching as it jabs one of the Stimpaks close to the wound.  "I – what?"

"The other humans wanted to kill you."

"Hold on –"

"Maybe I want to kill you too –"

"Can you go back to shutting up!" Jude hollers, her voice cracking.

It seems surprised by her outburst, sitting heavily on the crate once again.  "Why help me?" it repeats, and Jude reaches up to pull out her hair before remembering she shaved it off a week ago, like an asshole.  An asshole with lice.

"I don't _know_ , okay?  I'm just some... strung out junkie with a target on my back, and I just... I..."  It's _staring_ at her.  Its gaze is hard and stone-cold, but she has to hope there's some kind of pathos in the big green motherfucker.  "It just seemed like the right thing to do," she finishes lamely, looking away.

"How?" it asks, as if it's never heard the saying before.  Maybe she shouldn't be surprised.  Jude knows all about super mutants, and is especially aware of their ignorance regarding mercy.  Still, she can't help but meet its confusion with her own.

Unfortunately, Jude's confusion is hard to distinguish from anger.  "Because if I needed out, then you _definitely_ needed out.  But hey!  If you're complaining, well, you know the way back!"

She gestures for the door, ignoring the fact that she's locked and blocked it.  It squints at her as it tries to decide how angry to be at her outburst, but its woozy stance cheapens the expression some.  She almost feels bad yelling at it.

It shakes its head.  "No.  I... will stay here."  The muscles in its shoulder visibly clench as it grimaces, and Jude knows they're gonna need more than a couple of stimpaks to fix that arm.  If they're helping at all to begin with – it's as pale as a greenskin can get, looking unsteady even sitting down.

"Get some rest," she sighs, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms.  "Neither of us should go anywhere for a couple'a hours, anyway.  Lay low, figure out what's next."  She's not really talking to the mutant at this point, but it's definitely listening to her, even as it grimly stares at the barrel fire she's got going.  "Figure out what to do with your arm," she adds, watching the mutant as it lies down across the rough wooden crates.  Maybe it's comfortable like that.  Jude doesn't know.

The adrenaline is wearing off, leaving Jude tired and more than a little anxious about sharing her personal space with a super mutant.  Even as beat up as this one is, she's still woefully outmatched.  If it decides it wants to kill her, she's dead.

Well, hopefully, it learns the meaning of returning a favor and keeps its murderous tendencies to itself.

Thank god Henry's goons hadn't found _all_ of her stash.  After Jude does another brief check of the warehouse to make sure nothing's lurking, she decides to sit by the fire and lose herself for an hour or so.  It's not a reward so much as a coping mechanism.  Then again, what's really the difference?

She decides that Day Tripper is the way to go, and shakes out two pills from the nearly empty jar, popping them and waiting for everything to level out.  Day Tripper always puts her down, makes the world seem bearable.  Things don't seem so bad, and as the oily feeling of peace blooms in her stomach, she finds herself curling up on some crates.  They're so much better than the floor.  Maybe the mutant's on to something.

She should probably stop referring to it as "the mutant."  She should probably stop thinking of it like an animal, too.  Maybe it's the Day Tripper talking, but so far, the mutant hasn't been all that bad.  Mostly, it's been too beat up to be a threat.

"Hey," she drawls, reaching past the relaxing way her thoughts are unspooling, "What's your name?"

"Hm," it grunts, and for a l-o-n-g second, she thinks that maybe mutants don't _have_ names.  At last, it finally rumbles, "Punch."

" _Punch_?" Jude repeats.  That's a joke, right?  Is it fucking with her?  Are super mutants all named like that?  A grin splits her face as she asks, "Is that... a family name?"

"Brothers named me," Punch replies.  The comment comes out downright mournful, and Jude remembers what Henry had been saying to it.  Him.  Damn it, super mutant or not, he's clearly not just some mindless killing machine.

"Well... I'm Jude," she says, even though she knows she's already introduced herself.  She figures it's only fair that she does it right this time.  "Everybody calls me Jude."

Punch grunts in return.  She figures that's all she should've expected.  It's not like he's going to refer to her as anything other than "human" or "meatbag," right?

"Did Henry really shoot your arm clean off?" she asks after a long pause decorates the conversation.  She sees but doesn't care about his darkening scowl.  "And the bomb really didn't explode?"

"Yes," he grunts, adding a reluctant, "No," for the second question.  She watches the way his head moves, her trip trailing afterimages as he turns to look towards the warehouse doors.  "Maybe still sitting there.  Arm too."

"Your buddies – uh.  Your brothers wouldn't pick it up?"  Punch is silent at that, and Jude decides it's best to let that dog go back to sleep, dropping that line of conversation entirely.  "How does it feel?" she asks instead.

"How does what feel?" he asks.  His tone is dark and challenging.

Jude looks immediately and obviously towards his missing arm, but as she does, she sees the blistered skin and thin, stim-faded scars from his time in the raider camp.  She shrugs and looks away, embarrassed all at once for forgetting the rest of his injuries – the ones she could have prevented if she'd had more guts.  If she'd been more willing to stand up.  "Any of it, I guess."

There's no answer for a long time; when Jude looks back up, she sees him contemplating his lost arm with some hard, indecipherable expression.  "I will never see my brothers again," he says at last.  Jude thinks that might be greenskin for, _It hurts badly_ , and despite the fucking ridiculousness of the situation she finds herself wanting to... reassure him, maybe?  Maybe that's the biggest downside of Day Tripper - the weird, random empathy is definitely a strange sensation.

"I mean, can't you just... use your other arm?"

Punch looks sharply in her direction.  Maybe he hadn't realized she'd heard him, or maybe he'd expected her to know when to shut up.  He looks pretty irritated that she decided to chime in, and maybe it's insensitive, but she doesn't know how else to reassure a super mutant about his worth.  Eventually, because the Day Tripper and his weakness make her unafraid to keep staring, he seems to deflate.  Maybe he's just too tired for all the greenskin machismo.  Either way, he shakes his head, looking mildly disoriented afterward.  "I did not survive," he says.  "My brothers will not want me."

Well, that sucks.  Jude contemplates what kind of family would act like that, and then realizes that super mutants are on a whole different level.  There's no way she can comprehend them – they're motivated entirely by violence, and she just doesn't have the mind for that.  The only thing she really has a mind for is staying the hell out of a fight as much as she can.

She can, at least, sympathize with being an outcast.  After all, where is she gonna go now?  The same place as him, it looks like - nowhere, and fast.  "You and me both, buddy," she tells him.  They're in the same boat, at least, drifting way out there without any path to take back to shore.  "Neither of us could stay in that camp, but it's starting to look like neither of us have anywhere to go next."

Punch grunts noncommittally.  He seems dizzy and exhausted, and definitely not in the mood for conversation.  She can understand that - they Day Tripper is wearing off and she's starting to get tired herself.  Finally, at least, she thinks she might be able to get to sleep.

"Okay, well..."  She yawns and stretches, reaching over for the sleeping back and laying it across her set of crates.  "I'm gonna worry about tomorrow when it gets here.  You should get some sleep."

Another grunt, even less committed than before.  Jude rolls her eyes and then rolls over, facing away from Punch determinedly.  She's not going to give him the impression that she's worried he's going to eat her.  She's pretty sure he can't even stand right now.

"If you're here in the morning, we can talk options," she says, and then she closes her eyes, determined to get a few hours of sleep before the next long day forces her into action.

* * *

Jude's sleep is restless, and she wakes up more than once throughout the night.  She searches the dark warehouse with every noise, her mind is stuck on high alert as she imagines molerats, or feral ghouls, or something even worse lurking in the shadows.  More than once, she looks over to check on Punch and finds him asleep on the same pile of boxes he's been on all night.  She can't tell if it's reassuring or not that he hasn't left - and she steadfastly refuses to think about how crazy she is to fall asleep around a mutant.  The Day Tripper had convinced her they were facing tomorrow together, so she forces herself to believe in that.  Otherwise, she might as well give up on rest altogether.

Sometime after the moon has sunk out of the hole in the ceiling, Jude blearily opens her eyes at the sound of something scraping across the floor.  It takes her longer than she'd like to pin down the sound, but she's relieved when she realizes it's just Punch moving in his sleep, rocking the crates beneath him.  She almost goes back to sleep, glad to know molerats aren't about to attack, but then she notices his breathing has gone ragged.  She stares at his outline in the dark, listening to the trapped animal noises escaping him as his hand clutches unconsciously at his chest.

Jude crosses the floor before she can think better of it, coming to a stop only a few feet away.  Punch's face is twisted in an uncomfortable grimace, his jaw tight, his eyes rolling under their lids.  Jude hadn't thought mutants dreamed.  At least now she knows that they aren't any more immune to nightmares than she is.  The only problem is that now, she doesn't know if she should wake him or not.  If he's just having a nightmare, well, he can sleep through it like everybody else.  But he could be having a reaction to all the stimpaks.  Or maybe the infection is spreading, or even worse, he broke a rib in the camp and the stimpak healed it wrong.  She hadn't even thought about that, but now that she has, it's all she can imagine.

He might kill her if she tries to wake him up.  But, then again, he might die if she doesn't try.

"Hey," Jude calls softly.  She knows she's being stupid and raises her voice to a more demanding level.  "Punch.  Hey."

Punch groans, the crates creaking under him as a shudder rolls through his body.  Jude takes a step forward, and then one more, until she's just within arm's reach of him.  She doesn't want to touch him.  What if he tries to grab her like he did back at the camp?  But his distressed noises urge her to reach out, past her fears, until her fingertips prod his shoulder.

With a startled shout, Punch lurches forward on the crates, rising partway off the wood until he abruptly falls back again, cracking one of the crates as he does.  He lets out a gasp that sounds so _human_ that Jude immediately forgets the danger, putting her hand on his shoulder and applying gentle pressure in a bid to ground him.  His skin is hot and damp with sweat.  "Hey," she says, "Hey, it's just me."

He lifts his amputated arm, probably trying to grab her.  When he sees the stump instead of a hand, he looks shocked and drops it immediately.  He looks at her, disoriented and out of breath, and Jude can see herself in his lost expression.  She knows the feeling of waking up to a new normal, the nightmare being real, alone with only the memory of a decimated family the realization finally hitting that everybody's gone -

"Just breathe," she tells him, her voice shaking.  "Everything is gonna be okay."

Jude reads grief in the way Punch's face crumples.  "No," he rasps.  She doesn't have to ask what he means.  She knows he's waking up to his own new, terrible normal, that the realization is hitting him just as hard as it had hit her.  But what can she do to help him?

"Try and get some rest," she says, sighing wearily as she moves her hand from his shoulder.  He watches as it drops back to her side.  "You'll feel better in the morning."

Punch locks eyes with her and she feels like he wants to say something, like he's trying to convey a feeling through his mostly impenetrable gaze, and she wonders if she would get it if she were a super mutant too.  His jaw tightens, and he finally looks away from her in something like defeat.  She feels like she's missed something important that he's trying to tell her.

"Go away," Punch demands.  Jude knows she should probably do just that, but she doesn't like that she doesn't understand him, that she doesn't know what's wrong, and that she can't seem to help beyond giving him Stimpaks and staying out of the way.  The fact that he's a super mutant only makes things worse, because any rational person would have left the damned thing in the cage to begin with.  She must be crazy, trying to reason with a damned monster.

Fine.  If he doesn't want to talk to her, whatever.  They both know she can't make him do anything, after all.

She makes it all the way back to her sleeping bag on those thoughts, but once she reaches it she finds herself hesitating.  She can hear Punch's labored breathing behind her, and his grief-stricken face is stuck in her mind.  He'd stared at her, wanting her to know something, and she still doesn't know what it is.  All she knows is that it hadn't been the look of a monster.

Punch stares at Jude as she picks up her sleeping back and carries it over.  "You don't sound so good," she tells him, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it.  "I'm gonna stay close by.  Uh... so you can wake me up.  If you stop breathing, or something."

He keeps staring at her, watching as she nervously drops the sleeping bag beside the crates, far enough away that he can't step on her or grab her, but not any farther than that.  "So... I'm here, I guess," she says, settling into a cross-legged sit on top of the sleeping bag.  She finally meets Punch's eyes fully, and even though she still has no idea what he's thinking, and his expression is still a mystery, she thinks he at least doesn't look mad.

He rolls over, facing away from her, and she sighs and covers her eyes with her hands.  Well, even if her gesture of goodwill has fallen flat, at least she knows she tried.  She guesses she shouldn't be so tough on him, though.  What the Untamed put him through would probably be enough to traumatize anybody, super mutant or not.  And on top of that, his arm really doesn't look good - it's like the stimpaks haven't helped at all.  She can't imagine how painful it must be.

Well, shit.  Jude rolls over to face away from Punch, shutting her eyes determinedly.  If things don't change by daylight, they might have to make some tough decisions.  Jude forces herself not to think about it anymore, and focuses instead of the sound of Punch's breathing, uneven and wheezing, but not as bad as before.  Hopefully, he'll be okay.  Even though Jude isn't sure why she hopes for that.

 


	4. Going to Goodneighbor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Punch isn't doing so hot. Jude makes a decision to find a doctor, and the two of them start off for Goodneighbor. Unfortunately, they have to deal with the Commonwealth.

Jude doesn't get much sleep, when all's said and done.  Between worrying about Punch deciding to snack on her in the night, and worrying about his labored breathing, rest had been hard to come by.  Now, in the gray light of a misty morning, Jude finally decides that Punch needs more help than a couple of stimpaks and positive thinking can provide.  Even if he didn't, they can't stay here.  They're too close to the camp, and the Untamed are probably still pretty worked up.  Hopefully, they have bigger things to worry about than a strung out junkie and some one-armed mutant, but she doesn't trust Henry to not hold a grudge.  That is, assuming Henry's still alive, and not lying in a shallow grave.

Well, either way, it's not like they're going to put a bounty on her head or anything.  She's just going to have to steer clear of the area for a while.  That's fine - she always meant to wind up in a bigger settlement than that raider camp.

The problem is, it's not exactly common for a super mutant to make it through the gates of Diamond City, or into Goodneighbor for that matter, without somebody sounding an alarm or, worse, shooting shooting on sight.  But, those are the only settlements she knows of that have doctors.  How the hell is she supposed to get Punch into a town that wants to shoot him on sight - and once she does, who says any doctor there will be willing to help?  What self-respecting doctor would offer to fix up a greenskin?  What kind of person would want to _help_ one?

Well... shit.  Her, for one. Despite her general distaste for mutants, Jude can't help but sympathize with this one, even if it's only a little bit.  And so far, the only thing he's done is be rude.  That, and he's gotten sicker.  Weaker, too.  And despite every instinct Jude has telling her that it's a bad idea to hang around a super mutant, her gut is telling her the exact opposite. Punch is clearly unwell; the wound is starting to look well on its way to infected and every time he tries to stand, he has to hold on to something for support.  They have one stimpak left, and she's going to have to make it count.

All at once, Jude finds herself making a decision.  "Hey," she says, getting to her feet and ignoring Punch's glare.  "Cards on the table, Punch – we're almost out of stimpaks, and I think you need a doctor."

Punch scowls.  "Doctors don't help super mutants," he says, so matter-of-factly that he nearly convinces her.  It isn't like she isn't thinking it herself.  But Jude isn't about to go the rest of the way alone, and Punch doesn't have a lot of options, so the situation seems pretty cut-and-dry to her.

"I'll make them!  Dying from infection is a slow, painful way to go, and that'd be... that'd be just like if I'd left you in that cage to rot!"

He waits until she almost starts shouting again to speak, staring stonily in her direction as he growls, "I don't care."  And from his expression it seems true – except she knows better, because she'd been awake to see his unconscious, desperate breathing and those nasty night terrors.  She'd seen him for what he really is - somebody scared, and just trying to survive.  Jude doesn't know a lot, but she knows a will to live when she sees it.

"If you didn't care, you wouldn't have come this far with me and you wouldn't be letting me hit you with stimpak after stimpak to keep you going!  So don't give me that shit, okay?"

He doesn't respond.  She's not sure if he's stumped or pissed but she's not going to give him a chance to figure it out – she's wasted too many resources on him to leave him for dead now, damn it!  If he wanted to just _die_ , he shouldn't have let her give up five of the six stimpaks she'd managed to take.  As it is, things are already starting to take on the harsher edge of a too-fast world, her system starting to work up a real itch to trip – those stimpaks were supposed to help her manage until she'd gotten somewhere a little safer to deal with her withdrawal.  So, well, fuck him!

"Well," she continues, "I invested a couple hundred caps into your health, buddy, so until you've paid me back for _that_ , you're coming with me."  It's probably not the most convincing argument to use on a super mutant, but Jude's out of ideas.  The only thing she's got left is begging, and that's... well, she doesn't want to start down that road with the super mutant just yet.

"Could kill you," Punch says.  He sounds... tired.  Exhausted, bone-deep even, and even though he completely means it, there's no momentum in the threat.  It doesn't hit her the way it should, especially with her history, and all that proves to her is that she's right.

"Not like this, you can't," she replies.  "And that's saying something.  Look – I was gonna leave that shithole with or without you.  But – I could've helped you sooner and I didn't.  And I feel like shit about it, so let me make it up to you.  After that, you can do whatever the hell you want, okay?"

Punch clearly doesn't understand the concept of mercy, because he doesn't look like he's much inclined to do what she asks.  They both know the only thing she can do is argue, and she knows that words don't do much to motivate.  Deciding that begging might be the only way, Jude pleads with him.  "Please?"

"Can't stand up," he mutters, after a long, tense silence passes between them.  Jude's – well, she's taken aback by the admission, unprepared to see a greenskin so vulnerable even though she's been listening to his ragged breath for hours now.  His expression is uneasy, which drops a rock right in Jude's stomach.  "The world gets... dizzy."

Jude looks around the warehouse fretfully, realizing before she even offers that she'd barely helped him out of the raider camp, and spots an oil drum in okay condition.  "Let's find out if it passes.  I want to give you the stim, but you can't burn through it just getting to your feet."

She grits her teeth as she drags the drum across the ground, the slow scrape of metal against the cement highlighting just how strenuous it is for her to move.  Once she gets it within his reach, she wipes the sweat off her forehead and comes around to his side.  He flinches when she reaches out for him, probably not even remembering last night, but she's already had to touch him before, and she isn't going to get weird about it now.

With some help, Punch manages to get onto his feet, reeling forward until his hands come down on the oil barrel.  It creaks under his weight, but doesn't give, and soon he manages to right himself.  "Better or worse?" Jude asks, unable to hide the worry in her voice.

Punch... hesitates.  "...Not good," he says, echoing her own thoughts.  It isn't what Jude wants to hear, but at least he's being honest.

"Okay.  We're going to go to Goodneighbor, so it's... not far."  She thinks, anyway - she knows where it's supposed to be, but she doesn't really know where _she_ is.  It'll probably take a while to get her bearings.  "I'll give you the stimpak now, and as long as we keep moving, you should make it."

Punch nods in response.  He doesn't ask her what will happen if he can't make it all the way.  They both know that that just isn't an option.

Instead, he waits by the door as Jude pulls the crates and sandbags out of the way, clearing their exit.  Once they're ready to go, Jude hands Punch the last Stimpak.  "Take it when you need it," she tells him.  She isn't really surprised when he immediately stabs it into his shoulder, baring his teeth briefly as the needle punctures the skin.

"Time to go," Punch tells her.  Or maybe he's asking - Jude's not sure, but she knows he's right.

"Okay, come on," she says, and together, they step out into the street.

* * *

 

Despite Jude's reservations, Punch turns out to be pretty good at keeping up.  It helps that she's going slow in order to not draw unwanted attention - neither of them want to get into a fight right now, when they're both exhausted and dazed.  Despite herself, she's glad that Punch had given in to her demands; she really hadn't liked the idea of leaving him to fend for himself.  As stupid as it is, she feels a connection with the greenskin shadowing her steps, and she wants to make sure he's all right before she figures out what she's going to do with the rest of her life.

They come out through an alleyway onto a narrow street lined with rusted, blown-out cars.  The buildings are tall and silent, creaking as the wind blows through their smashed windows.  It's almost peaceful, and she trots out into the street without thinking about it.

A man vaults over the nearest car and lands, crunching the chipped asphalt under his boots.  If the skull bandana around his face didn't tip her off, the fact that he's wearing gunner colors is enough to tell her that she is royally fucked.

"H-H-Hands up!"

Jude knows those words by heart; the moment she hears them, her arms raise on reflex alone.  She wants to look back, to see if Punch is there, or if he's abandoned her at the first sign of trouble.  The gunner waves his pistol in her face, so she guesses Punch is at least hiding out until this maniac backs off.  If he's bailed on her - well, shit.  She doesn't want to think about that.

"I didn't know you guys were taking up house around here," she says, trying for diplomacy despite the tremor in her voice.  "If I had, I woulda gone around."

"Wh – oh – y-yeah!"  She can't see most of his face through the bandana, but his voice... isn't exactly convincing.  Now that she looks, he doesn't seem as armed to the teeth as most gunners are - she's only seen a couple of them, but they'd painted a lasting picture in her head that this guy just isn't quite fitting.

She frowns.  "You're awful jumpy for a gunner."

"What, have you _met_ lots of gunners?" he snaps in return, jabbing the muzzle of his pipe rifle in her direction.  He looks like he's forgotten it isn't a switchblade.  "You don't know shit, lady, now give me your goddamn bag!"

The moment Jude feels obligated to comply – mostly because of the gun in her face – Punch comes from through the doorway of a nearby store and clocks the gunner from behind.  Jude screeches a little as the gunner suddenly crumples, but then she realizes what happened and – and she doesn't know what!  "I thought you'd left!" she half-shouts at Punch, unsure if it's anger or relief or just cold hard confusion making her pulse spike.

"I went around," he replies, pausing for a long moment before adding in reluctance, "We are going to Goodneighbor... together."

"Yeah," she breathes, all that adrenaline dissipating under her skin, "Right."  She realizes, _holy shit_ , he's really following her!  For one reason or another, he's taking her lead and it's... exhilarating?  She's not sure.  It's just not as scary as she'd thought it would be – he doesn't look at her like he wants to make bread out of her bones, and he – he helped!  The thrill of knowing for a fact that, at least for now, Jude can rely on somebody else to keep her out of trouble is almost overwhelming.  Maybe it's the near-death experience talking, but she's actually _glad_ to have the greenskin around.

Punch lifts a foot to crush the gunner's head beneath and she immediately shouts, "No!"

He stares at her, first at her outstretched hands and then her face, his own expression grim but neutral.

"We – we can't just _kill_ him.  It isn't fair."

"He is weak.  Fair has nothing to do with it."

"Well, fair's got better odds for me, so I'm keeping to it!  Just – just... I dunno, chuck him through a window so he learns his lesson and let's keep going."

She figures it's a violent enough compromise, and after scowling down at the gunner, Punch agrees with a grunt, lifting the man with his one hand and casually lobbing him through the nearby window.  Even as unwell as he is, the full grown human is barely a handful.  There's a pained groan after the fact, so he's probably still alive.  He should just be thankful Punch didn't curb-stomp his skull, but he'll never know that.


	5. Good, Good Neighbors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Punch and Jude make it to Goodneighbor, where they make an impression with the locals. Also, Punch gets a good nap and Jude gets to trip, so it's a double win!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the delay in uploading stems from me getting food poisoning for a couple days and then getting distracted by christmas stuff. but here i am!
> 
> we have a lot of fun here, but we should get serious for just a second here. kids, when you decide to make eggs for yourself, remember to always double check the best by date. also, clean out your fridge like, a lot more often than you do. because the eggs are bad. they're always bad. i promise you your eggs are probably bad. don't eat bad eggs. its bad
> 
> thanks for reading!

It takes nearly all day to cross town, zigzagging through broken buildings, skirting wide open spaces and generally trying not to draw attention from more stammering gunners – or, worse, feral ghouls.  Punch turns out to be as cautious as Jude is when it comes to crossing under collapsing buildings and attracting attention.  He also follows Jude without complaint, and since her sense of direction is the only non-fucked thing about her, they manage to make it to the front gate of Goodneighbor without any more violence.

Punch isn't doing so well, though.  The last stimpak had gotten him as far as the Commons, but despite acting tough, Jude can see his injuries starting to outweigh his greenskin bravado.  By the time they reach the gate, he looks noticeably pale and sweaty.  Pale being a relative term, considering her own corpse-like complexion, but Jude knows sick when she sees it.

"Hmm."  Punch sniffs the air as they approach.  "Smells like ghouls."

"Well, _yeah_ ," Jude replies, "It's full of 'em.  The okay kind, not the feral ones."  He grunts in response and doesn't acknowledge her when she asks him, "You doing okay?"  She takes that as a _no._  Well, it's a good thing they got here fast - now they just have to hope there's a doctor willing to treat super mutants inside.

Jude finally opens the door to Goodneighbor and comes face to face with the barrel of an assault rifle.  "Whoa, kid," the watchman on the other end says, the barrel swinging smoothly over her head to center on Punch.  Despite having his dark eyes trained on the super mutant looming at the gates, the ghoul doesn't immediately pull the trigger.  If that doesn't say something about Goodneighbor, nothing does.

Jude throws her hands up for the second time that day – not exactly a record she's proud to have, but as long as it keeps the bullets from flying, she can live with it.  "It's okay!" she shouts, momentarily panicked that he's going to shoot before she has a chance to explain, "He's with me."  She tries to make it sound important, but she can feel Punch sagging behind her and it's put a frantic edge to her already high-strung shout.  As a result, when she tells him, "We – we just need a doctor," she sounds distressingly pathetic.

"Huh."  Well, _he's_ clearly baffled.  Jude bets there isn't exactly a protocol for super mutants that doesn't involve shredding them with tommy guns.  His eyes trail over them as she drops her hands, stopping dead-center on the pus-covered bandage and the infected stump of an arm that Jude only wrapped after finding some cloth in a destroyed clothing shop.

He leans back on his heels, lowering his gun at last.  "Hell," he says, "Alright, sister, I hear ya.  Follow me.  Maybe put your hands up less, makes you look suspicious."  He turns to lead and Jude follows, taking a few steps before waiting for Punch's legs to get the message.

People are staring.  Jude feels uncomfortable about it, shrinking under the squinting eyes sizing them up at every turn and alleyway.  She's never been one for lots of people, and she's _never_ been this close to the center of attention before.  This might be a terrible idea, and as they draw more glances and questions, Jude's anxiety hyper-focuses on just how bad an idea this is.  All it would take is one person losing it for the whole settlement to turn into a mob, and if anyone here has as much bad blood as she does with mutants, it could be catastrophic.  Worse than that - it would be a shit-show, with Punch and Jude in the middle, and that news would definitely make its way back to the Untamed.

Punch doesn't seem phased by all the eyes on him, but Jude can't imagine he cares all that much about what people look at.  As far as he's concerned, they're just pre-bagged meat, right?  Or, maybe, they're not even that - Jude doesn't imagine ghouls taste very good.  Punch keeps limping alongside her, focusing only on his feet.  Sometimes he drops behind; other times, he almost looms over the watchman leading the way, who tells anyone curious enough to approach, "Nothin' to talk about, get on with your life," as though super mutants come through here every day.  Maybe they do – the watchman hadn't shot Punch's face off, after all, even though it would've been crazy easy to do.  If that's the case, though, Jude hasn't heard about it - other than Punch, she's never heard of a super mutant willing to do anything other than pillage a settlement.

She wants to ask the ghoul if they get a lot of mutants in Goodneighbor, but his pace keeps her just out of comfortable conversation range.  It might have something to do with how little sleep she and Punch have had.  It could be that he's not interested in smalltalk.  She wonders if she should thank him for offering to help.  She should definitely thank him for not shooting them on sight.

Soon enough, they reach the back end of Goodneighbor and the watchman stops outside of a neon-lit building, the sign above the door reading _Memory Den_ in flickery red light.  "Here we are," the watchman says.  "Take your pal in and Irma will get you down to Doc Amari.  She's good people, should be willing to help you out."

Before Jude can ask any questions, the guy is already heading back the way he came, leaving her to shout a startled, "Thanks!" before appraising the door on her own.

Punch sounds woozy when he speaks at last.  "The doctor is here?"

"Only one way to find out," she replies, forcing herself not to look back at him as she grips the door handle and pulls.  She doesn't need to see his face to know he's running on fumes, and honestly looking at him might only make her too anxious to focus on the task at hand - that is, convincing this Dr. Amari to see Punch as a patient and not a lab experiment.

Jude leads Punch through the door and down the short, crumbling brick hallway.  Nobody is manning the entrance, which could mean a lot of things, but as Jude enters the main room of the den, she can immediately see they aren't alone.  There are a bunch of weird looking chairs with domes over them scattered across the room, a good half of them occupied by people who seem to be watching television.  In the middle of the room is a big red couch on a raised stage, and a woman is currently lounging on it with a book in hand.  She glances up, and then sits up so abruptly she knocks over a bottle sitting on the ground at her feet.

"My God!" she exclaims.  Jude doesn’t know how to interpret her expression and so she chooses to go fast before she can lose her nerve.

"Someone told us there's a doctor here," she half-shouts, anxiety pumping up the volume of her voice.  The woman's eyes bulge as Jude leads Punch closer, but she doesn't know if she sees his arm or not.

"Oh, honey," the woman says, trailing off with enough pity to even rile Punch up a bit from his stupor, grunting unappreciatively at her tone.

"Just tell me if there's a doctor Amari here," Jude says.

"Just down those stairs," the woman says.  She doesn't offer to help, and only watches as they pass her and all the weird chairs.  Jude lets Punch go first down the stairs, just in case he takes a fall; she doesn't want him to crush her to death by accident.  When they reach the bottom, she lets him stand at the foot of the stairs, breathing heavily from exertion as she finishes the hallway and knocks on the door at the end.

"I'm very busy!" a woman shouts from inside the room.  Jude waits until Punch reaches her again to pull the door open.

"I said, I'm _very_ busy!"  Dr. Amari's brusque tone turns shocked as she shouts, "Oh!" turning to find a super mutant standing there in her doorway.  When she sees Punch's missing arm, she utters a more solemn, "Oh."

"Doc Amari?" Jude asks, waiting for her silent nod before continuing, "We need your help."

"My arm is infected," Punch grunts, awkwardly parroting what Jude had told him earlier.  She can't resist beaming up at him, proud that he'd remembered, that he'd cared enough to listen to what she'd had to say back in the warehouse, before they were... friends, or whatever it is they are now.

"My god.  What is this?"

Jude's not really surprised at Amari's shock and confusion, but she can respect how quickly the doctor comes within Punch's grabbing range to take a look at the infection.  Punch tenses, but he doesn't move and Amari doesn't actually _touch_ him, which is good.  "It got blown off – uh, somebody laying mines near the Commons.  We got, uh, pinned in for a day or two..."

If Amari doesn't believe her, she doesn't say anything; her eyes momentarily dart to meet Jude's, but look quickly back to her visual examination.  "How many stimpaks did you use?" she asks.

"Well, we had four on us..."

"That would have offset the infection if applied immediately, but this looks – hmm.  What are your names?  When did this happen?"

"Um, he's Punch, I'm – Judy, it wasn't so long ago, maybe... two days?  A day and a half?  I'm not good with time, doc."

The doctor's gaze is sharp when she looks up at Jude again, but she continues to not question the story.  Not verbally, at least.  "Well, I think we can do something about the infection, but I'm not sure...  How much blood did he lose, in the explosion?"

For a moment, Jude's stricken by the visceral memory of how much blood she'd seen pooling under him when they'd first brought him back.  God, what had she been thinking, letting that shit go on?  She should have said something the minute she saw what was happening.  Her parents didn't raise her to be so fucking heartless.  "A lot," she answers.  Her voice is unsteady, but Amari is clearly an expert at pretending not to notice emotional weakness.  Punch, on the other hand, is staring at her critically, even as he barely keeps on his feet.  She meets his gaze briefly, but her guilt is enough to make her look away.  He probably wouldn't get it anyway.

"We don't have the... means... to do a transfusion – in order to do what I can for the arm, we'll have to sedate it – him, ah, _you_."  Amari looks momentarily lost as she decides who to speak to, which is strangely reassuring.  She turns to Punch like he's a real, bonafide patient, and Jude wonders if maybe it's not so weird, caring enough about a greenskin to get them medical help.

"No," Punch growls, and Jude tries hard not to look disappointed at his stubbornness.

"It's non-negotiable, I'm afraid," Amari replies, her tone exactly as non-negotiable as her demands.

For a moment, Punch looks like he might just let it go, turn around and walk out, and Jude puts a hand on his good arm to keep him from doing just that.  "You could use the rest," she says, trying not to wince at how cold and clammy his skin feels.  "C'mon.  We made it all this way."  She hesitates, then adds hopefully, "I'll keep an eye out for you.  We're safe here."

Punch looks down at her, his expression as grim and unreadable as ever – but now, she can see the cracks where his fatigue has set in.  The infection's made him dizzy, and he looks at Jude the same way he had the evening before, when she'd snuck up on Henry.  It's enough to make her feel guilty for putting so much faith in a doctor she doesn't even know, even if it feels well justified.  If this goes south – well, it'll be all her fault.

"Fine," he says at last, reluctant but finally willing.

"Come this way, then," Amari says, unhesitating, leading Punch to the metal exam table.  "I hope it holds," she says, and after a second of hesitation, Punch puts it to the test by sitting on it.  It creaks a little but doesn't seem to be ready to collapse, which is good.  "Punch, is it?"

Punch grunts an affirmative noise, then mutters, "Yes."

"Punch, I appreciate your trust in me.  I promise to treat you fairly if you treat me the same."

For a moment, Punch doesn't respond, but at last he nods once in affirmation.  "Fair," he repeats, and Jude catches him looking in her direction.  As soon as he sees her looking back, his eyes fall to the floor.

Amari smiles graciously at him, and then gestures for him to lie down.  "Try to relax.  I will be giving you something to help you sleep while I do what I can to help."

Punch nods, although he doesn't move from his spot.  Amari steps away to gather her supplies, and Jude takes the time to come over to Punch's side.  He looks at her, and she instinctively reaches out, putting her hand on his shoulder and feeling his cool, damp skin.  It's a sharp contrast from last night, and she knows now she made the right decision forcing the point.

"You okay?" she asks.

"Not sure," he mutters.  His eyes move back to Amari, who either misplaced her sedatives or is otherwise giving them space.  Jude isn't sure which of those has the worse implication.  "Doctors need trust," he says.

"Sure," she replies.  "She seems okay.  And, hey, we didn't get shot at the gate, right?"

Punch grunts, but otherwise doesn't respond.  Jude gets the familiar feeling that she's missing something, but she can't figure it out by the time Amari comes back to them.  "Alright," Amari says, wielding a needle as she approaches.  She seems to read something in Punch's expression that Jude doesn't, because her bedside manner kicks in, leaving her tone gentle as she puts a hand on Punch's arm.  "Don't worry.  I will make sure you are well taken care of.  Whatever has happened, this is a safe place."

"Hm," Punch says.  He looks at Jude, and she thinks it might be worry that Amari's seeing.

"I'll be here," she tells him.  "I've got your back."

Punch nods, and doesn't complain as Amari gives him the sedative.  "Lie back," she tells him after she's done, and he does it without comment.  Jude keeps within his view until his eyes finally drift shut, his muscles relaxing in gradual stages until his breathing levels out.  He looks a lot more peaceful under sedation than he looked regular asleep, but that's mostly because his muscles have slackened, leaving his face stoic and placid instead of twisted in some kind of grimace.  Still, considering his usual expression, he looks almost serene.  Jude hadn't thought super mutants could look serene.  Or peaceful.  Or...

"You should rest," Dr. Amari says, turning that soft bedside manner on Jude and distracting her from her thoughts.  Jude, who's been completely fine running on fumes for the last day and a half, feels all at once how heavy her shoulders are and how itchy her eyes are.  If she closes them for too long, she might not open them for hours, so she tries not to blink more than necessary.

Maybe the doctor's right.  She should probably get some sleep, maybe on a couch or something.  She'd seen those funny looking seats upstairs and they'd looked comfortable enough.  Although, when she looks over at Punch, sedated on a medical table he barely fits on, Jude hesitates to agree.  "I don't know if it's a good idea for me to, um, go anywhere...  I said I'd keep an eye out."

Amari dismisses her concern with a wave of her hand, walking to her desk.  "He will be sedated for the next few hours."  She leans down to write something on a piece of scrap paper, quickly and efficiently folding and tearing the uneven edges of her note off into a nearly perfect rectangle.  "Take this to the Hotel Rexford, next door.  The woman at the front desk will lend you a room to rest in until his status changes."

A comped room at a hotel, even for just a couple hours, seems overgenerous to give a stranger, which makes Jude wonder if there might be some ulterior motive at play.  "You aren't planning on pulling something on him, are you?" she can't help but ask, voicing the question before her brain has a chance to tell her to stop.

To her credit, Amari only smiles wryly in response.  "I won't lie, I have some noninvasive tests I would like to run – it isn't every day I have a living super mutant to observe at my disposal.  But other than the blood sample I have already taken, nothing will be performed without conscious consent.  I _am_ a professional, and I intend to provide your friend here with as much care as I would any other patient."

There's nothing to Amari that makes Jude think she's lying.  Just the way she says it puts Jude at ease, relaxing her in a way no chem can.  "Well..."

"I'll check in with you in a few hours or so," Amari says, and that seems to be it.  Jude looks at Punch one more time before finally deciding that it's probably okay to leave him here for a little bit.  The selfish part of her isn't willing to give up a free, private room, either.  She hasn't had space to herself in a long time.  It'd be nice to be alone for a bit.

Even though she feels pretty guilty leaving, she decides it's better that she get some rest too, and heads up the stairs.  Punch is in good hands, and Amari will keep him safe.  Jude forces herself to believe that as she heads out onto the street to find the Rexford and, hopefully, get a little rest.

* * *

The Rexford is an old, mostly destroyed building lying on the other side of the street from the Memory Den.  Considering the only other sleeping room is made up of mattresses and boards out on the street, Jude can't help but feel lucky for the option she's been given.  As she enters the hotel, a man with stringy gray hair and a paunch tells her, "If you're lookin' for chems, I got 'em," but doesn't seem surprised when she just shrugs and passes him by.

The old lady at the front desk is a real bitch, but she doesn't do much more than grumble under her breath after Jude gives her the note from Amari.  It must be a normal occurrence for Amari to send people over here for a few hours of rest, if Jude is hearing the old lady's complaints right.  Which is weird - how many people does Amari send over here?  What's a compassionate doc like her doing in a town like Goodneighbor?

She supposes she's got no right to complain.  When the old woman gives her a room key and tells her the number, Jude decides it's probably best not to look a gift brahmin in the mouth and turns to head up to the stairs.

It isn't long before she's settled, her bag's contents spread on top of the dresser as she considers what kind of chem she should calm herself down with.  After shaking out a Day Tripper pill and picking up her Jet inhaler, she lies down on the mattress and tries to let her trip take her away.

As the seconds peel away into minutes, unspooling ever slower, her thoughts flit from place to place, confused by the Day Tripper but not deterred.  Everything from these past two days finally has a chance to process, although she sucks down some Jet when she stumbles thoughtfully over possibly killing Henry, hoping to rush past those thoughts.  She's careful not to go whole hog – as intense as the rush might be, there's no reason to waste the last of her stash on one heavy, short-lived trip.  The only thought she allows herself to think about that horrible dickbag is that the world would be a better place without him in it.

She thinks about Punch more than anything else, especially now that the Jet's bought enough time for it. She doesn't know if he's going to stay around, or leave, or if she's going to leave first because super mutants are horrible, and she's scared that he might decide one day soon to eat her or kill her.  Her trip takes the fear and mutes it, until all she can think about is how nice it had been to know somebody had her back, somebody stronger than her, who could protect her from the assholes using the Commonwealth as their own personal playground.  And he _had_ protected her, and now she is protecting him, helping him, and maybe they can even keep helping each other, now that they have nobody else.

 Her thoughts turn to his greenskin brothers and whether or not they're looking for him.  Does Punch have a family?  Is somebody missing him?  He'd said they'd never want him back, but what if he's wrong?  He'd been given a nuke and told to blow himself up, so he probably _isn't_ , but - there could be somebody.  A brother of his who saw him taken, maybe.  There could be somebody out there looking for Punch right now, not realizing that he's far away from where he'd been captured in the first place.

It's probably wishful thinking.  The Untamed probably killed the greenskins Punch had known, leaving him alone, with nobody to want him back.  That seems... sad, really, echoing in the dark place Jude keeps memories of her family.  She can't imagine a life like his; the simpleminded brutality and the whole, well, suicide-bombing thing - they're so far away from her that she can't even fathom what it might do to a person.  Or, she guesses, a super mutant.

She remembers that look on his face the night before, hopelessly lost, missing something so deeply that even he couldn't hide it.  She hadn't understood it then, and she doesn't understand it now, but she knows that she wants to.  She might even need to, if she wants to be able to help Punch more than she has.

By the time the Jet and the Day Tripper start to wear off, though, she's no closer to figuring out where he's coming from.  Unfortunately, as the high goes, so does her interest in analyzing anything.  Actually, now that she's sobering up, she's starting to realize how hungry she is, and how much energy has gotten pent up in her as she spent her entire Jet trip lying down.  Jet's best saved for moving - even pacing - because the restless energy afterward can be hard to shake.

Deciding that it's probably been an hour or so, Jude packs up her stuff and heads out into the hall.  She should go check up on Punch, make sure everything's okay, and then go hunt down a drink and some food.

The pitying lady isn't in the Memory Den when Jude shows up, so she heads past the weird chairs for the stairs without stopping.  The doors to the clinic are closed when Jude goes to check, a cracked _We're Out_ sign hanging on the knob.  She listens against the door but doesn't hear anything, so there's probably not a super mutant rampage going on, or some other shady shit.  She hopes not, at least.  She really wants to trust Amari.

Trust has nothing to do with trying the knob, but when she finds it unlocked, there isn't enough trust in her to resist a quick glance in.  Just to check.  Really.

Punch is still asleep on the gurney, which is great.  Amari is in there, too, and she's analyzing someone lying in one of those funny chairs, so Jude decides its okay to leave her to it.  She might admit to looking in later, but right now she thinks its best to just go her own way.

Her own way is to the bar, which sounds like a great idea after the day she's had.  The place nearby is called the Third Rail, and she's surprised at how comforting it is to see more watchmen inside to keep the peace.  Despite Goodneighbor's reputation, so far it's been less dangerous than the raider camp.  There hasn't been a single brawl in public yet, and the only gunfire she's heard has been distant and non-threatening.  Those stories about the place she'd heard, passed through from Diamond City, are starting to look like a crock of shit.

The bar is down a set of stairs, operated by a Mr. Handy with a bowler.  There's a woman singing on stage, keeping things light and jazzy, and Jude can't read any impending bar fights in the atmosphere.  She probably shouldn't be shocked that people can drink in groups without turning the event into a massacre, but she's been living a pretty fucked up lifestyle until now.  Either overly isolated, or bathed in rampant violence...  A bar like this is exactly the kind of thing she needs after all that raider bullshit she'd let herself get caught up in.

The Mr. Handy bartender barely gives her the time of day and serves her a beer and some molerat chunks only after she counts out a handful of caps for him first.  The beer is almost cold, and she tries not to drain it too fast as she turns to watch the woman on stage.  For the first time in a long time, Jude feels safe, and as long as she hasn't misjudged Amari, she can assume Punch is safe, too.

When she's finished with the beer, she orders a whiskey, just to wash down the foam and the terrible aftertaste of molerat.  Alcohol is nothing like chems – it takes longer, and being drunk is a heavier feeling than most of her favorites, but it sure is nice once in a while.

A ghoul in the nice suit settles at the bar on the stool next to her.  Jude squints, but she honestly isn't sure if she's supposed to know him or not, so she looks back to her drink before he can look over and catch her staring.  It doesn't take a genius to know that ogling ghouls in Goodneighbor is a good way to get yourself shot.

"Your greenskin pal doin' all right?" the ghoul asks.  She glances back with a cautious frown, but with that voice, it's easy to recall his gun trained on Punch's face at the door.  Apparently, that's enough to convince the alcohol in her that he's someone she can trust, being that he hadn't shot at them or anything.  At the very least, he's the only person in Goodneighbor to know anything about her - she isn't about to let go of that connection, not when the alcohol is convincing her to chat.

"Yeah," she says, eying the glass in her hand with intent to drink.  "He's fine.  Yanno them – resilient motherfuckers."

The ghoul laughs, his irradiated vocal chords doing something funny to the sound, turning it rough and deep.  The robot floats by with another glass, topping Jude off as it sets up a drink for the watchman without needing to ask.  "Yeah," he agrees.  "I guess I'm surprised.  Didn't think they were smart enough to travel with an ambassador."

Jude laughs at that, the idea of Punch thinking far enough ahead to keep a human translator around almost too much for her.  "Yeah, he's a real egghead compared to the rest of 'em."

"So, you know, I gotta ask since I've been fieldin' questions all day about it – what's the story?  You two... friends, or somethin'?"

Jude has to give the guy props for not laughing as he asks what would normally be a ridiculous question.  On some level, it even reassures her – maybe if he doesn't think it's crazy, it's not so wild for her to think that there _is_ some kind of friendship to be found with Punch after all.  She's not sure if super mutants even know what the word _friend_ means, but at least he seems to get trust and fairness okay enough.  Those are core tenants of friendship, right?

"I don't know if 'friends' is the right word," she says.  "But, uh.  We helped each other out of a bad situation, I guess you'd say."  Jude's doesn't want to broadcast her ties, and besides, she doesn't know if she wants to tell this guy _everything_ about herself.  Not without him buying her a load more liquor.  She's got to make him work for it, at least a little.

"Sounds like the right one to me, but what do I know."

Jude notices Dr. Amari by the stairs as she turns to look properly at him, but decides to wait it out.  He's leaning with an elbow on the bar to look at her, at first just the way a guy looks at a girl after a drink or two, before squinting with a sort-of frown.  Maybe she's been staring too long?  She doesn't want him thinking she's never seen a ghoul before.  She needs to say something before he jumps to the wrong conclusions – she doesn't know _why_ she needs to, only that she _does_.  She can't let this guy think she's some kind of... damned bigot or something!

"It's definitely a partnership, or something," she says, the words coming out in a rush.  It sounds stupid even as she says it, like maybe she wants him to stop talking to her, which is patently untrue.

Instead of assuming the wrong thing and taking his drink elsewhere, he smiles.  It's a smooth-talker's smile, without any of the con-man air that usually makes a guy seem slimy and up to no good.  His teeth are surprisingly clean.  "What's your name?" he asks, using a voice that matches the smile.

"Jude," she replies, forgetting that a fake name would be better to give out right now than her _actual_ one.  Dr. Amari is now visible over his shoulder, looking for a good way to interrupt their conversation and looking uncomfortable at the prospect.  Now that there's an audience, Jude realizes how close she's listed into his space and leans back all at once, wincing as her elbow squeaks against the damp bar.  "What about you?"

"Franklin," he says.  His smile doesn't go anywhere, even as she makes an idiot of herself.  "I think I should buy you a drink."

For a moment, Jude entertains the idea of another round and where that could lead.  If Amari wants her, though, that means Punch is probably conscious, and she doesn't want to leave him hanging.  "I'm gonna have to take a rain check on that one."  She points so he can catch on to Dr. Amari's presence,  mostly so he knows she means it when she says, "Next time, though."

He looks back at her with a funny expression on his face, but it's not a bad one.  Not as far as she can tell, anyway.  "Yeah.  Remember, I owe you."

Jude laughs a little at that, climbing off the stool.  "Don't worry, I never forget when a guy owes me one."

Amari gives her a weird look as she approaches.  "Was I... interrupting?" she asks.

"Too early to tell," Jude replies with a grin.  "Is Punch awake?"

"He is."  Amari leads the way out of the bar.  Jude takes a moment to look back on the first step, and sure enough, Franklin is watching her leave.  He lifts his drink towards her, and she grins the rest of the way up the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the longest chapter in the fic! it's pretty much all shorter than this from here on out. hope you guys threw away all your eggs, and please consider giving me a sign so i know this isn't all in vain


	6. Miscellaneous Questing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jude takes a job to help pay back Amari, and Punch is hesitant to join in. Sometimes, birds of entirely different feathers should stick together, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> suuuuuuper sorry for having delayed this for so long, the holidays were a whirlwind and with convention prep (ALA 2018 IS NEXT WEEK) and things have just been bonkers. i've got this chapter done, the next chapter is edited, and i'm working on revising the final two chapters. aaaactually the final chapter still aint written yet but i'm getting there! it's not a lot anyway.
> 
> so i hope you enjoy this chapter! i'll try to post the next chapter this weekend, and then i'll either post directly before or a day after i get back from anime los angeles. have i mentioned i'm going to a convention? lets haaaang
> 
> anyway, thank you for reading, and i will see you in the comments section!!

"I really didn't mean to interrupt," Amari says once they've left the Third Rail.  She seems embarrassed about it, and Jude can't help but laugh a little at being shown sensitivity on such a silly subject.

"I got a rain check," Jude says in an attempt to reassure her.  "Don't worry, doc.  I care about Punch way more than some rando."

Amari looks startled by the admission, and Jude has to admit, she's a little startled too.  She hadn't expected to say it, but admitting to caring for the super mutant feels like a relief.  She _does_ care about him, even if it had taken a couple of drinks to be able to say it.  She'd cared about him when she'd seen him in that cage, dying a slow and painful death at the hands of a bunch of maniacs.  She'd cared enough about him to risk her life - more than that, her _livelihood_ , because as much as she hates to admit it, she would never have left the Untamed if she hadn't been forced into a corner.  And now, after making it so far together, Jude can't pretend that he isn't a friend.

"So," Jude says, realizing that her silence is making Amari stare, "How's Punch doing?  Is he... okay?"

"Punch is doing well, all things considered," Amari says, emphasizing his name with some concern.  Jude heaves a small sigh of relief, reassured even as Amari continues to go deeper into what she had to fix.  There's a lot of talk about internal injuries and plenty of suspicion about his cauterized wound, but Jude manages to keep up with her for the most part.  "His arm is looking much better, and he hasn't needed to be restrained," Amari concludes as they end at the doctor's lab, sounding marginally more cheerful than before.  "He's been a better patient than others, which has been a pleasant surprise."

Punch is sitting on the gurney, still looking groggy.  "Hey," Jude says, encouraged when he looks immediately in her direction. "How are you feeling?"

"Arm's still gone," he grunts, as though maybe he'd expected differently.  He doesn't _seem_ surprised, more irritated than anything, so Jude hopes he's just being a pain in the ass.

"I'm afraid I'm not a miracle worker," Amari replies, passing right by the irritable super mutant to pick up a clipboard off the counter.  "The area should still be numb, but there _will_ be some irritation as the skin heals.  I would recommend bed rest for at least one more day."  Punch squints at the suggestion; from what Jude's seen so far, he doesn't understand the concept of rest.  "There were several bones that had to be broken and set again, in order for the stimpaks to properly take effect.  Your ribs, as well as two of your fingers...  No matter how desperate the circumstances are, you should always use stimpaks with caution."  She looks to Jude with that advice, like she knows there's more to the story than Jude's let on.  Thankfully, she doesn't look interested in learning just what Jude's left out.

There are more notes on the clipboard, but Amari doesn't read them and Jude decides they're probably for another patient.  Maybe the person in here earlier?  "But he's okay now?" she decides to ask, cutting to the heart of the matter.  "He's not - sick, or anything?"

"Feel fine," Punch says.  He doesn't look at either of them as he says it, and Jude doesn't like the way Amari frowns at him.  He adds, "Going to leave," but he doesn't make any move to get up.

"You'll want to take it slow," Amari replies.  "But, yes, you are free to go when you are ready."

Jude realizes that they haven't once discussed payment.  She almost doesn't want to bring it up, because there's no way she has the caps to cover everything Amari must have done, but - she can't just skip out on the doctor like that.  Especially not if she wants to be able to come back for help later.  It's definitely not in her best interest to skip the bill.

Amari seems to know where Jude's head is at and waves a dismissive hand in her direction.  "I have no interest in collecting any sort of fee from you," she says.  "The unique experience was payment enough."

"There's gotta be something," Jude replies in disbelief.  "I've got... not a lot of caps, but I can definitely get more."

"I don't need your caps," Amari says gently.  She probably doesn't mean to sound as pitying as she comes off, but it gets to Jude all the same.

Jude scowls in return.  "Well, I wanna give you them!  Punch was seriously messed up, and you got me a free room at the Rexford, and those are the kinds of favors I gotta pay back."

Amari regards her with a thoughtful expression.  Jude's immediately embarrassed for lashing out about something as stupid as this, especially given the fact that generosity in this day and age shouldn't be overlooked, but Amari doesn't seem upset at all.  "I... appreciate your determination," she says at last, with a hint of a smile.  "If you insist on paying me back, let it be a favor, instead.  I could use more of those."

Considering how hard it is to come by a load of caps, Jude's very okay with the concept.  "Sure," she says, "What do you need done?"

Amari looks thoughtfully around the room before sizing Jude up.  She seems to have something in mind, because all at once she says, "I was going to hire somebody to retrieve some parts from the Hardware Town warehouse.  If you would be willing to make the trip, that would save me the money."

An errand like that is a bit more dangerous than Jude would normally want to do, but Amari has helped her out enough to warrant it.  She deserves Jude taking the risk.  "That's fair enough.  And these aren't parts I can get somewhere... uh, else?"

"Unfortunately, no.  There is supposed to be a pre-war shipment of computer parts that were left there, and I desperately need specific pieces.  If they were easy to go get, I would have already gotten them."

Oh.  Computer shit?  That might be a problem.  Jude chews her lip and looks at Punch, who probably isn't any better on the technical side of things.  "What exactly would we be... looking for?  I don't really get all that high-tech stuff."

Amari turns and begins to look over the mechanical parts scattered across the counter.  "A motherboard is a flat, green, rectangular object, with a variety of connectors across the face."  Apparently finding one, she turns back to Jude with a flat slab of plastic that isn't very big at all.  It's a bright green color, and across the surface, there looks like a miniature cityscape of dull silver and gold connectors.  It's hard to forget, which is good.  Anything that's easy to find is fine by her.

"The hard drive is another matter," Amari continues.  "There aren't many computers that will have the one I'm looking for, so I honestly cannot expect miracles...  It's a relatively large, metal box, with a short stack of metal discs and a board similar to the motherboard.  It should be stamped on the underside, letting you know what it is.  Unfortunately, the only one I have is being used, and so I don't have an example."

A lead is a lead, and so Jude shrugs it off.  "So all I have to do is find those two things?"  At Amari's nod, she gives a thumbs up.  "I can definitely do that."

"Excellent.  I appreciate the help.  Now then."  Amari briefly checks all of her pockets and dusts her hands off once she's sure she has everything.  "I have an appointment at the Rexford.  You're both welcome to take your time here, and take what supplies you may need to ensure my work isn't in vain.  If I am not here when you return with the parts, you may leave them with Irma upstairs."

"Sure thing, doc," Jude says.  She doesn't expect Amari to actually leave them alone in the lab, but Amari doesn't seem concerned about anything being stolen, taking her leave briskly and with purpose.  It's only when she's gone up the stairs that Jude realizes she hasn't asked Punch for any input on the matter, and she turns to him with a curious smile.

"So?  What do you think?"

Punch stares at her as though she's the one who's been mutated into a monster.  "Stupid," he tells her.  Well, at least he's honest.

"What's stupid about doing a favor for the doctor who saved your life?" she retorts, crossing her arms.  He looks severely nonplussed about the whole situation.  Jude realizes that she might've made a promise that she's going to have to keep on her own.  "You don't have to come with me," she says, even though she's reluctant to admit it.  It's the truth, though, isn't it?  Now that they've reached Goodneighbor, and Punch has been given a clean bill of health, there's not any reason for the super mutant to keep following Jude around.  Hell, even if there _was_ a good reason, it's not like there'd be any way to make him listen to her.

It's weird that she hadn't considered what would happen when they parted ways at the end; up until now, she hadn't given more than a passing thought.  Jude would never have expected to get used to a super mutant as a companion, but somehow, Punch has managed to worm his way in, and now she feels... well, kind of bad about going their separate ways.  There's definitely some anxiety there, too - Jude's not sure she's strong enough to make it all the way to Hardware Town and back by herself.  Hell, Punch had saved her life on their way _here!_   Without him watching her back, traveling into the city is a less than compelling task.

Shit, she shouldn't have promised Amari anything before talking it over with Punch.

Punch, who's been silent while her internal thoughts swirl into an anxious storm inside her, finally grunts.  "Too weak," He says.  "You can't make it alone."

"What are you gonna do about it?" she retorts, letting her anxiety out through childish, moody sniping.

Punch gets to his feet slowly, sliding off the gurney and standing so close that Jude has to take a half-step backward in order to look up at his face properly.  His body radiates heat, and his expression is unreadable as he stares down at her.  Jude has never wanted to be this close to a super mutant in her life.  Even before they'd murdered her family, she'd been just fine with keeping a couple of miles between her and the nearest greenskin.  How had everything changed so quickly?  How is it that now, she can match Punch's gaze and not want to immediately run and hide?  Even his most passive expression has an undercurrent of violence, but right now, she doesn't feel threatened.  Not really.

  "Could make you stay."  His voice rumbles in his chest when he speaks, and they're standing so close that Jude can feel it, sending the hairs on her arms on edge.  Her heart begins to race, fluttering in her ribcage like a can on a string.

"Is that so?" she asks.  Her voice comes out as weak as the retort, staggering under his heavy gaze.

He's silent for almost too long, and then he says, "I will go with you."

"What?" she asks, frowning like she hadn't heard him correctly.  And she's not sure she _did_ \- he always seems too stubborn to be reasonable until suddenly he isn't, and it keeps throwing her off.  "I - are you sure?"

"Fair is fair," he says.  Jude wouldn't usually pin a super mutant for being kind, but she can't help the impression that that's exactly what Punch is being.  He's right, after all.  She probably can't make it on her own.

"Sounds good to me," she says.  She can't help the grin that grows on her face as relief washes out the anxiety that had been twisting her up inside.  Punch grimaces at her in return, a completely incorrect version of a smile, and she laughs at him and slaps his good arm.

It's probably too late to start out now, but Jude doesn't want to stick around here much longer.  She does, however, take Amari up on her offer of supplies, swiping three stimpaks and a few loose Day Tripper pills she finds on a tray.  Besides the medicine, Jude also finds a box of clothes - none of it matches, and it's clearly a bunch of clothing left behind.  Maybe it's a donation box?  Jude's not sure, but she finds a long jacket that's not too big, and so she takes that as well.  If Amari wants it back later, she can have it, but Jude wants a little more protection from whatever they might encounter.  A shirt and threadbare jeans had been okay huddled around a campfire, but they don't cut it out in the city.

 "Okay, big guy," she says, once her quick sweep is complete, "Looks like you and me are going on one more trip."


	7. High in Hardware Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Punch and Jude head out to gather the computer equipment Dr. Amari needs. Punch wants to talk, but doesn't know how. Jude just wants to get back to Goodneighbor before their luck runs out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes the title is a direct reference to hard in hightown, i had no choice, i had to do it to em
> 
> thank you so much for reading! i hope you enjoy this chapter, which is the tamest yet. next chapter is where all the fun is at, and then after that we just have to wrap it up so i can send jude and her friends out on more fun filled errands. after this story is wrapped up, i'm hoping to write some more - hopefully with more enticing romantic entanglements than we've seen so far :)

Punch and Jude find a space to crash out on the street, near enough to the Memory Den that Jude feels comfortable getting some shut-eye. The scavvers, chemheads and wanderers in Goodneighbor are pretty good about watching out for each other; even if she didn't have Punch to watch her back, she thinks she'd be left alone. Punch definitely helps, though; he's keyed up from his long sedation, and so he spends the hours before sunrise glaring at anybody who looks their way. Plenty of neighbors return his stony stare with their own suspicion, but Punch is enough of a deterrent, and they keep well enough away.

If Punch had gotten his way, they would have already been working through raider camps to get to Hardware Town, and not sitting around while Jude catches up on her rest. Thankfully he'd given in, considering Jude really can't see too well in the dark, and other than muttering about human weaknesses for most of the time, he doesn't try to fight her decision.  She's not sure if it's resignation or trust that keeps him by her side, but she isn't going to look too closely at that brahmin's teeth.

Jude wakes up around sunrise and finds Punch sitting cross-legged beside her. He looks frustrated about something, but he doesn't react to Jude's curious look, so she ignores it in favor of pushing herself up and scrubbing her eyes with her palms. "Time to go," Punch tells her. She groans, but she knows he's right. Anyway, she knows he isn't going to stop bothering her until they get moving, so she doesn't have much of an option.  Super mutants definitely don't understand the purpose of rest or relaxation.

Now that he has his health back, Punch is turning out to be a pretty restless guy. Jude should probably have expected it; super mutants live lives filled with violent and bloody massacres. As they make their way south out of Goodneighbor's territory, Punch seems to have trouble keeping his speed close to Jude's. It's only when they encounter signs of potential enemies that he falls back to join her; otherwise, he keeps within earshot so that she can tell him when he's going the wrong way as he marches on ahead. He seems distracted, or maybe just moody, and she doesn't know if it's because he's just eager to get this over with or because of something else.  She supposes she's going to have to decipher his moods some way or another because otherwise, this friendship is going to be pretty one-sided.

They encounter a bloody but empty super mutant fortress on their way towards the Commons that they hadn't seen coming in. As they approach, Jude finds herself hovering close to Punch, just to be safe, and Punch slows down enough to let her. From his grim expression and the way he sniffs the air in distaste, it doesn't look like there are any super mutants left, but she's not taking chances.

They find a raider camp in similar order; pieces of armor and puddles of dried blood litter the ground, but other than a lingering smell of decay, there aren't any bodies. As they weave through the walls blocking them from the Commons, Jude catches Punch staring at the charred remains of a hut supported by large metal cages, furrowing his brow and scowling before turning away. He doesn't comment on it, and she avoids catching his eye in case her sympathy is too obvious. She wonders if she should ever try talking to Punch about what happened with the Untamed, or if he'd be happier forgetting it ever happened.

Just before the Commons are blockades with warnings painted across them. Jude doesn't need them to tell her not to get too close. They'd passed closely around it on their way to Goodneighbor without so much as a glimpse of a feral ghoul, and she hopes for the same thing to happen again.  Thankfully, ferals don't like sunlight, and so Jude and Punch manage to avoid any unnecessary confrontations.  The whole time they skirt the area, though, Jude's heart hammers in her chest, and in the quiet, her blood rushing in her ears sounds like the shuffling of feet.

Once they get far enough away from the Commons, Jude feels comfortable enough to start a conversation, as one-sided as it's going to be. "So," she says, jogging to catch up to Punch before he can put too much distance between them. "Are you okay?"

Punch grunts noncommittally.

"Uh, okay... should I take that as a yes?"

To her surprise, Punch responds by shaking his head. "Not sure," he tells her. "Just want to go."

Jude frowns. She doesn't know what to do with that, but digging might be a bad idea. "If you wanna talk it out, I guess I'm here to listen," she offers, feeling stupid almost as soon as she says it.  Punch has proven time and time again that he isn't much of a talker. She figures most super mutants solve their problems by smashing something until there's no more problem. He doesn't seem annoyed by the offer, though, looking down at her with an almost blank expression. 

That doesn't mean he opens up, though.  Like any guy, as soon as their eyes meet, he turns his focus back to the road and doesn't speak. Punch wanders ahead, drawing their distance out to nearly half a block before he stops and lets her catch up. "Talking is... hard," he admits after falling into step beside her. "The words... aren't there."

"I mean, if beating something up would be better for you, I'm sure we can find a dog or a mirelurk or something."

Punch shakes his head again. If she didn't know better, she'd say he looks ashamed. "Don't want to fight now."

Jude would never have put money on a super mutant being uninterested in fighting. She gapes at Punch until his furrowed brow and brief glare in her direction reminds her that she's staring. "Oh," she offers, wincing at how unsmooth her attempt at nonchalance comes out. "I guess that just leaves talking, then."

He grunts but doesn't respond. Figures.

It takes them almost two hours to pick their way around various deathtraps. Jude keeps making sure they angle around Diamond City's borders - she doesn't want Punch to get shot after all the hard work Amari had put into him, and Diamond City's security tends to shoot first and ask questions later. On top of that, they have to avoid another raider camp, and at one point, they come across the markings of a Gunner gang somewhere nearby. Jude, who's fine with only having one encounter with a gunner under her belt, is determined to find a way around them.

Thankfully, there's a chems dealer taking a break in a nearby garage. His directions are long-winded and he does a lot of eying Jude up and down, but Punch's presence keeps him on topic and, ultimately, keeps him from hanging around. They take his advice and climb around a broken section of the highway to bypass the gunners. It's slow going, mostly because Punch has to take the time to carefully pick his way around barricades that he can't hop over, but Jude sticks with him until they make it to the other side.  Like the raider camp before, she sees his scowl and avoids direct eye-contact as he solemnly works his way over ruined cars and broken cement.

After they pick their way around a pile of decimated cars, Jude can just see the edge of the Hardware Town sign. "Thank _God_ ," she groans, relieved to finally be at their destination. As peaceful as it's been getting here, she's not interested in testing her luck more than she already has.

She makes a move to climb over the car between her and their goal, but Punch reaches out and clamps his hand down on her shoulder, drawing her back. "What's the big idea?" she snaps. He points towards the entrance, and Jude squints to make out what looks like a body lying out front. There's no armor, no weapon - just some sad-sack in a beat up jacket lying in a pool of their own blood.  It's the first body they've seen all day.  Something about it makes her throat tighten.

"Not safe," Punch says. His hand stays weighted on her shoulder, as if he thinks she might decide to ignore his warning. Jude, for her part, isn't about to ignore a super mutant when they say there's danger. "Stay here," Punch tells her.

"Where do you think _you're_ going?" Jude asks as Punch moves around the car. She takes half a step, but his backward glare roots her in place. "Hey!"

Punch ignores her. Jude watches him approach the front of the store with her fingers in her mouth; any step he takes could end on a mine, or he could move into range of a sniper hiding somewhere on the roofs. She looks around but doesn't catch any flashes of light or movement. Punch leans over the body once he reaches it, staring down at it with an expression Jude can't see from this distance; then, to her horror, he reaches down and pulls off a finger.

She doesn't move when he turns back to her, and he stares across the way as he lifts the finger to his mouth and begins to chew on the knuckle. _Oh, boy_ , she thinks, her mind reeling, _That's a greenskin_. She knows that super mutants eat people, but _this_...  Seeing someone she considers a friend pluck a limb off a corpse like a tarberry is almost more than she's able to handle.  Her gut twists at the sight and her instincts urge her to run - but Punch had told her to stay, and here she is, staying.

He spits out the finger and begins walking back. She can see some dark, brackish blood caught in the corner of his mouth as he reaches her, and she can't help but indicate it with a finger towards her own face. "Uh, you got a little..."

He wipes his mouth with the back of his arm. "Dead a long time," he tells her. "Tastes bad."

"Uh, yeah," she replies weakly. "I... bet it does. Do you... eat people a lot?"

Punch shrugs his shoulder. "Could eat less," he suggests, in a tone that implies that he probably won't.

Jude gulps and tries to ignore his critical stare. "Okay, well, if he's dead, do you think it's safe?"

Punch nods, turning to lead the way. Jude trails behind, still feeling a little queasy from the finger food situation. He tests the door, then he shoves into it with his weight.  The door pops off its hinges as if it'd barely been hanging on before.

The inside of Hardware Town is a fucking wreck. The displays have been flipped over, some thrown together as barricades, and there are corpses littering the store. It smells like they've been here for a couple of days; Punch wrinkles his nose in disgust and Jude can't help but agree. At least he has enough sense to not eat carrion, she guesses, watching him kick over a body.

They head into the back warehouse, where three looming aisles of huge crates sit, waiting to be unloaded. It looks like the back end of the warehouse has sunken in through the ground, and the shelves have buckled, leaving boxes scattered all over the place. "Oh, man," Jude sighs, "It'll take _forever_ to get through all this." As she speaks, she spots a set of worn stairs leading up to what looks like an office. She doesn't know a lot about pre-war life, but she knows enough to be a good scavenger, and offices are usually where people kept things like shipping manifests and inventory lists.

"I'm gonna see if I can find a shortcut around unloading every one of these crates," Jude says, turning to Punch, who looks largely uninterested in the whole deal.  That makes sense - this had her idea, after all.  He's just here as backup. "If you want to see what's in some of these, go ahead. Any duct tape, or metallic stuff, you should keep. Basically, if it's shiny or sticky, we take it."

Punch shrugs. Jude shrugs back at him sarcastically and heads up the stairs.

The hallway here is short and sunken in. The first door she comes across leads into an office, where a hole the size of Punch has been blown in the floor, leaving the desk and its computer balanced precariously on some exposed beams. Jude makes a face at the terminal, and it deepens into a scowl as she edges around the room and sees the power button still lit. Well, shit. The most likely place for a manifest would probably be on the computer, right? The only problem there is that she's terrible with computers.

She checks the other rooms down the hall before committing to the computer. One room is completely collapsed, and she avoids it entirely after nearly falling into the hole in the floor. The room in the far back is lined with old filing cabinets that she rifles through, but mostly she only finds burned documents and a few jargon-filled manuals that send her right back to the computer room. It'll be tough, but if she's smart about it, she might be able to crack into it and bypass hours of searching through old files and unlabeled crates.

The desk is in too precarious a situation for her to use it, so she carefully heaves the terminal off of the desk, pulling it until it's power cord lies taut against the ground, and sits cross-legged in front of the screen. She pushes the power button and stares at the meaningless rows of words and symbols that flicker onto the screen.

"Shit," she mutters. She can read all right, but this combination of letters and numbers and weird symbols is a little too much for her. Plus, the green tint highlighting the lines of code is bright and jarring, and it makes the words jump around on the screen.  How could anybody before the War manage with this crap?

It's then that she remembers the loose Mentats she had salvaged from the camp. Mentats aren't usually her drug of choice - it's too cerebral for her, and it makes her anxious when she doses herself too high - but it'll help her make sense of all this technical jargon, and that's good enough for her. She digs out the tin and pops it open, taking one of the pills and letting it dissolve on her tongue. she watches the screen as the chem kicks in, and it almost feels like her eyes have been out of focus for too long as the words suddenly start to make more sense, the patterns in the code becoming more obvious. She tries TAPESTRY, then TRAVESTY, and finally TAILORED, and the computer dings as it accepts the password.

She's glad she bothered to take the tin with her as the files scroll by on the screen, and she looks for any mention of computer parts. Under a file called > CORRECTIONS LOG #289, she finds a shipping manifest for a crate of electronic components that were mis-delivered, meant for the military outpost further up the road. She's heard lots of stories of military gear being misplaced or shipped wrong; Jude bets that it getting pretty hectic near the end of things. At least their mistakes make it easier for people like her to get their hands on rare pieces of equipment.

The shipment is in a safe that's somewhere in the store. Jude hadn't taken note of it before, but with the Mentats boost, it should be a snap to find.  She begins going through the rooms as thoroughly as she can, looking for indentations or scrape marks in rooms without a safe in them, just in case it got taken somewhere else.  Thankfully, she finds it behind an overturned filing cabinet in the records room. If she's lucky, she can pick the lock before her focus fades.

"It's up here!" Jude calls down the stairs, pausing to listen for Punch and then giving up when she doesn't hear him. He's probably looking for unspoiled organs or something. She shudders at the thought, but at least he hasn't looked at her like dinner.  Not yet, anyway.

The safe, it turns out, is harder to crack than she'd wanted it to be. She's gone through three bobby pins by the time Punch wanders up the stairs. "Fuck me," she grumbles as her fourth bobby pin snaps, the sound of Punch's heavy footfalls distracting her from picking up the fifth. She looks over her shoulder and up at him as he watches her from the doorway, and gestures to the safe. "They locked the equipment up. It hasn't been cracked yet, so I'm pretty sure it's still here, but I can't get the lock to give -"

She cuts herself off as Punch lumbers up to her. From where she's sitting, she barely comes up to his knees, and she swallows audibly as he bends over her and grabs the handle on the safe door. When he yanks on it, the safe nearly drags itself into Jude's lap. She scrambles back to avoid getting hurt, landing on his feet and grabbing his ankles for support.

"Move," he tells her, and she quickly darts out of the way. He puts one foot on top of the safe, and then grabs the handle again; this time when he yanks on the door, the safe groans and creaks until it gives under the pressure. He rips the door off its hinges, then drops it down the hole beside them.

The box is way smaller than the safe made it out to be; it's a little bigger than a thick book, and it doesn't weigh much of anything at all. She ignores the red security stamp emblazoned on the package and rips it open, pulling the cardboard box free of its packaging. Punch watches her as she flips through the box's contents, and when she picks up the motherboard, he points at it. "We're done," he says.  Jude might be reading some of her own relief in his voice, but he seems glad to be finished.

"Looks like this is all the junk Amari wanted," Jude agrees, putting the pieces back and closing the box. "Alright, looks like we got what we came for." As she jams the box into her bag, she notices the Mentats tin glinting in the dim overhead light. As she looks at it, her own high starting to fade, she gets one last bright idea. "Hey, you know how you wanted to talk, but you don't know what you wanna say?" She pulls the tin out and holds it up for Punch to inspect. "You wanna try taking a Mentat and see if that helps?"

"Men...tat?" Punch repeats skeptically, taking the tin and squinting at it.

"It makes you think better," she explains with a shrug. "I dunno how else to put it. It's a chem, so..."

"Chems are for weaklings," Punch grumbles, but he doesn't give them back.

"Oh, whatever. You were chomping on days-old corpses out there, but you wanna give _me_ shit for popping a smart pill?"

Punch waits until Jude has climbed to her feet to reply. "Mentats makes you smart?" he asks.

"Mentats makes you _think_ smart," she corrects. "It wears off. Look, if you want to give it a shot, take one. If not, hand it over, because I'm not going to lose any more of my stash."

It doesn't look like Punch is going to do _either_ of those things anytime soon, and Jude almost makes a grab for the tin herself.  Before she can gather the nerve, he shakes it once and holds it back out to her.  "Later," he tells her.  "In Goodneighbor."

Jude grins up at him, taking the tin and tossing it into her bag.  "Sure thing.  We can dose ourselves together and get intense about it.  Now, how about we get outta here?"

"Yes," Punch agrees, clearly relieved.  "Time to go."


	8. Picking up Strays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Punch and Judy make their way back to Goodneighbor. On the way, they run into somebody whose luck ran out when Gunners stole his clothes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit dudes, i apologize. i had this chapter sitting ready to go for literally a month now but i totally forgot that i hadn't already posted it? boo!!! that was on me. but it's done, and the next chapter is nearly done too, and i even have a story set up for these guys at a later date (if i get to it). so without further delay or ado, here's the chapter! 
> 
> i hope you enjoy, and if you do, please share this fic! readers are what i live for!

Jude finds that Punch isn't in as much of a hurry going back to Goodneighbor as he was to get to Hardware Town. He occasionally moves ahead to check for danger, but for the most part, he keeps close. "Somebody's been cleaning up the neighborhood," Jude comments as they wander by the empty raider camp again, the scene taking on new meaning after seeing the massacre in Hardware Town. Punch nods his head jerkily in agreement, but he doesn't seem to have anything to add to the fact. Not that there's much more to say about it - other than puddles of blood and random junk scattered across the ground, there's no clue as to who's been through here. "Maybe it was the Silver Shroud," she says, remembering rumors flying about some nutjob playing at a superhero.  That would be amazing, actually!  The Shroud is one of her favorite comic characters - if someone decided to bring him to life, then all the more power to them.

"Silver Shroud?" Punch asks. "Sounds weak."

"The Silver Shroud is not _weak_ ," she responds indignantly, "He's roaming vigilante who fights crime by shooting the shit out of people! He's always right where he needs to be, and he's always got a slick one-liner. He's all about justice with a silver bullet!  I have an almost complete fourteenth issue of the comic, and let me tell you -"

Someone screams from the Commons, a short yelp followed by something longer, more desperate and primal. Jude freezes to the spot when she hears it, her heart slamming into her ribcage. Listening hard, she realizes that whoever's screaming is probably right in the middle of the fucking Commons. They're way too far away to help, and honestly, Jude's just glad it's not her out there.

Despite following her lead for most of the walk so far, Punch stands and continues to listen even as Jude begins to move on. Jude stops and looks at him, his head tilting as the screams continue. His eyes are fixated down the alley, past the words "DANGER DO NOT ENTER" painted by the mouth in chipped white paint.

"There's nothin' we can do," she says.  As reluctant as she is to leave it alone, Jude knows better than to think she can do much of anything for whatever sorry sack wound up in the shit. "The Commons - that place is filled with ferals. That's why we keep circling it.  Whoever's in there, they're on their own."

"It's coming," he replies. He's right, too; the screams are definitely getting closer, and that's what worries Jude. The last thing she wants is to have a feral horde chase her down and tear her apart. Punch doesn't even seem worried about the possibility, but maybe he isn't the best judge of danger.  Jude wonders what it must be like to be so unafraid.

She edges away anxiously, but Punch doesn't move.  He ignores her when she says, "We really need to go."

The screams are getting louder. Jude can hear the sound of running across the open plaza now. She hears a trash can tip over, glass shattering, and below the terrified and near-constant screaming that comes with blind panic, Jude can hear the guttural roaring of a ghoul out of its mind. The world around her starts to spin faster than she's ready for, everything happening so fast, the oncoming events hurtling at her like a radstag stampede. Her breath catches – she's not fast enough to outrun a pack of ghouls, is she? If she isn't, how long can she hold them off with as few bullets as she has? What's going to happen to Punch, if she gets murdered by ghouls and leaves him stranded here?

"Look," Punch says, and the stampede that is the future crashes into the present. A man turns the corner and bolts down the alley, screaming like a maniac. He's stripped down to his underwear and has his arms pinned behind his back as he runs. The alleyway behind him builds with noise, hisses and shrieks bouncing off the bricks. As soon as the man sees them, he makes a beeline straight for them - bringing the ferals with him.

Jude fills with panic as the horde throws itself into the alleyway behind the man.  There's probably a dozen of them, but they're so fast, and they throw themselves over one another so much that Jude feels their numbers are closer to the hundreds.

" _Run_!" the man screams at them, before seeming to think better of it and shouting, " _Help me!_ "

There are only a couple dozen yards between the guy and all those ferals screaming after him, their arms swinging wildly as they race to be the first to catch him. When the guy reaches them, the ferals will come right after, and they need to start running now, but Jude's head is buzzing and her limbs are unresponsive as he shouts, "Run, _run_!"

The man crashes between them at a full sprint. Jude reaches out for his arm without thinking, grabs hold, and is carried with his momentum. Terror turns running into an automatic response, but when she glances back, she sees Punch still standing there. There's a moment where he's the only thing she can see, and time unspools wildly around her, the way it does when reliving an old trauma. She watches him turn away from her, back towards the alleyway teeming with ferals, and there's nothing she can do to stop the horde from bearing down around her friend.

" _Punch_!" she shrieks, tripping over her feet as she drags the man with her to a stop. Punch flings three ghouls through a crumbling brick wall with a snarl. His arm comes back to catch another in the jaw and when it bites his fist, he punches its skull into one waiting behind it.

"Let me go!" the guy wails.

"Shut the fuck up!" Jude shouts, the world slamming into full speed as she fumbles for her pistol, the only gun she's ever held and the same one she's almost out of ammo for. Her aim is shit, even if she had two hands to aim with, but there's no fucking way she's letting Punch get murdered by feral ghouls. The man starts shouting at her, but Jude doesn't hear any of it; she pushes him away from her and he stumbles backward into a pothole that sends him sprawling.

In the alley, Punch roars and throws another ghoul into the building, smashing another beneath his feet. Jude tries to aim, but the ghouls move so fast!  How is she supposed to get a good shot? She zeroes in on a feral coming up on Punch's right, her hands shaking until she finds a fixed point just above its gut, and her instincts make her pull the trigger before it can come up on Punch's blind spot. The ghoul shrieks and staggers back, and she pops off another round before it can begin to draw the horde in her direction.

Punch takes care of most of the ghouls, but Jude manages to take out another one before it's all over. When the last ghoul falls, its head crushed between Punch's palm and the ground, Jude drops her gun without thinking and rushes towards him. It only takes them seconds to reach each other. God, they had been so _close_!

"Are you okay?" Jude asks, unable to hide her fear as she looks for the mortal wound she's convinced she'll find. Punch squints at her as though he can't comprehend what she's saying, so she clarifies. "Did you get _hurt_?"

"No," Punch says, almost curiously. Jude quickly realizes she's being scrutinized, and since she doesn't know how to feel about that, she looks for a quick distraction.

Well, there's always the handcuffed guy lying in a pothole. "Hey, buddy, you okay?"

His chest is heaving and she's pretty sure he's pissed his shorts, but he looks like he's going to live. Being cuffed probably isn't helping his situation any, but she's not stupid. Even if he's nearly naked and clearly unarmed, Jude isn't about to just free a potential psychopath. If he's cuffed, it's probably for a reason. Then again, there are some pretty fucked up people living out here.  Who knows what his deal is.

The man wheezes. "Almost – I, I-I almost..."

"It's okay, or it _will be_ if you _keep your voice down_!"

He takes several deep breaths, but at least he seems to be listening to her. "C-Can you, uh, uncuff me? I, I don't – if those _things_ come back, they'll fucking kill me!"

"First, tell me why you're only wearing them and a pair of underwear through the Commons."

Jude sees something other than terror and panic on his face as his brow furrows. "Some gunners thought it would be funny," he tells her, his eyes dropping sullenly to the asphalt. The sincerity in his voice makes Jude want to believe him. He looks too humiliated to be lying about it, and the terror of his near-death experience is probably enough to keep him honest. Besides, he doesn't look particularly dangerous - he's probably around her age, with a couple of missing left teeth and literally no place to hide any dangerous weapons on him. Honestly, leaving him like this would probably be a crime.  At the very least, Jude doesn't think she'd sleep easy knowing she'd left some poor naked scavver handcuffed in the Commons.  Even _if_ the Silver Shroud's cleared the rest of the area out.

"Turn around," she says. Jude notices when he finally sees Punch standing there, but he only stares at him for a moment before looking to Jude. It only takes that momentary glance before he turns, extending his arms to give her a better vantage on the cuffs. They aren't particularly hard to pick, and Jude pockets them once they fall free of his wrists.

Punch grunts behind her. "We should go," he says, and Jude knows that it's not a suggestion.

"Yeah, definitely," she agrees. After thinking it over, she decides to give the stranger her jacket – it's not technically hers, but he could definitely use the cover. "We're heading to Goodneighbor," she tells him as he pulls the jacket on, "We can watch your back if you want to come with us."

"Goodneighbor, huh?" he replies, voice shaking. He looks around as if he's expecting more ghouls to pop up. "I – well... At least the ghouls won't eat me there, I guess." He laughs a little unsteadily and admits, "Any place with liquor is good right now."

Punch doesn't look pleased to have another human around. Jude figures she can apologize for being a sap later - she'll even listen to him call her a weakling without complaint. She's not just going to leave this poor guy stranded. "What's your name?" she asks.

"King," he replies. Although he looks somewhat less pathetic with the jacket on, he doesn't look anywhere _near_ deserving of that particular name. Jude scoffs, but he seems pretty serious about it. Whatever, it doesn't matter what he wants to be called.

"Fine, that's fine." She stops short of giving her own name in return, and he doesn't ask for it. Figuring that he could use a few minutes to collect himself, she waits until they've gotten a little bit away from the Commons to start interrogating him. "What the hell's your deal?" she asks, keeping her voice low enough to not echo off the valley of broken concrete. "Why the hell are you out here on your own, naked like that?"

"I was heading north," King replies. "Gunners took all of my shit and left me to die. Kind of already explained it."

Even though he's trying to sound tough, Jude can hear the nerves shaking his voice. Jude looks to Punch for his opinion, but he stares back with an unreadable expression and doesn't pitch in with the conversation. Figures. "Gunners usually have a reason for doing messed up shit," she says. They also don't usually leave survivors – she doesn't mention that, though, in case it freaks King out again.

"I already told you why," he snaps. "They thought it'd be funny."

"Hmm," Punch growls in disbelief. King winces in his direction and hunches his shoulders together, but he doesn't say anything else until Jude turns her full attention back to the road ahead.

"I... I was running a package from up north – just minding my own business – and these guys jumped me. Just south of Concord, yeah? Shitty place to get fucked over, but there I was, and since there's no way I can go either direction without the purse, I got stuck in the middle."

"And in this case, the middle is full of Gunners."

"You don't know the _half_ of it. Well, they didn't like me getting places I didn't belong – says _them_ , anyway – and they decided to play a game with me and a couple hundred ghouls."

There _definitely_ hadn't been more than twenty ferals, but Jude gets the point. "You're lucky to be alive," she says.

"Probably thanks to the Jet," he chuckles. "See, I convinced them to at least give me a fighting chance. I knew I couldn't outrun the Gunners, but I figured, if I could be just a little faster than the ghouls, I could outmaneuver them. Guess I'm just lucky you guys came along, because I was starting to come down."

"Lucky," Punch repeats, saying the word as if it tastes like a rotten finger. Jude glances in his direction, but he firmly resists looking at her.

"What's with the greenskin bodyguard?" King asks her, evidently feeling better enough to refocus the conversation away from himself.

"He's my friend," Jude replies. It's the first time she's announced it unprompted, and she looks briefly over at Punch to see if he understands what it means. He's being pretty cagey with King around, though, and his expression is as unreadable as ever.

King laughs somewhat disbelievingly. "Sure, whatever. Just keep him on a short leash, okay?"

"What?" Punch growls. The dare is implicit in his tone - repeat that and see what happens. Jude looks at him again and finds him scowling darkly at King, who fidgets under his gaze, and she wonders what's got him so riled up.

"Sorry, uh, that isn't your thing I guess. That's cool." King throws his hands up in apology, but Punch's expression remains stony. "I mean, if you're good, you're good. We're all good. I'll be better once I find some fucking pants, of course..."

"Right," Jude says. She doesn't know if she should be skeptical of his insistence or amused by it. Punch mutters something under his breath but refuses to repeat it even when Jude squints suspiciously in his direction. Well, if he's going to be like that, then fine. Jude doesn't need to know how much Punch dislikes the new guy - she can estimate it pretty well based on his expression and silence alone. As far as she's concerned, King is just some gawky, chatty shrimp, even though he's nearly a head taller than her. If Punch has a good reason to not like him, she doesn't see it.

For the rest of the way back, King fills the silence with running commentary. Most of it is about how shitty gunners are, or how much he hates ghouls - "Not that Goodneighbor's a problem, it's totally fine that it's all ghouls, I mean, they had to go somewhere, I guess..." - but he manages to ask questions that Jude's willing to answer, so it's not _completely_ annoying.  He doesn't pry when she glosses over how she and Punch met, and seems to know a _lot_ of gossip, and Jude can't say she doesn't enjoy the rest of the trip.  She can't help but glance back at Punch as he lumbers close behind, though, and each time she does, she receives a blank face in return.  She just wishes she knew _why_.

Before long, the three of them make it back to Goodneighbor.  As Jude comes up to the gate, she gives King one last look.  For being chatty as hell for almost thirty solid minutes, he sure has shut up fast; he's staring straight ahead at the gate, as if bracing himself for another feral horde to come bursting out at him. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.  The last thing Jude wants to do is bring a bigot into the city. "Are you... okay?" she asks skeptically.

He nods slowly and then blinks his focus back to her.  "Uh, yeah.  I just... uh.  Ghouls are a sore spot right now.  You know?"

Jude watches him wince as she opens the gate, preparing for the worst.  He almost looks surprised when no horde comes for him.  Actually, Jude notices it looks kind of dead compared to when they'd left.  Punch slams the gate behind them and brushes by Jude and King as the two humans stand in awkward silence.  Jude shoots a glare at his back, but he doesn't seem to notice.

"So," King says, stiffly, "There aren't as many ghouls here as I thought there would be."  Jude doesn't respond, mostly wondering what she's going to do about him, and during her silence, he asks, "Do you know where I can get... uh, you know.  Pants?  Clothes?"

Well, taking King with him to Amari's to beg for clothes is a better plan than standing around here.  Jude shrugs and points towards Punch's retreating form.  "Follow that guy," she drawls, taking her own advice to encourage him.  King keeps really close to her - he smells like, well, piss and sweat and feral ghoul spit, so his proximity is nearly too much to handle, but Jude suffers through it.  The guy has to do his walk of shame through all of Goodneighbor in boxers and a jacket that only barely reaches his knees.  Jude isn't going to make him do it without at least some kind of moral support, as gross as he is.

Jude sort of wishes there was more distance between them as they turn the corner past the third rail and Franklin comes into view.  He's clearly not pressed to patrol right now, leaning against the brick wall across from the Third Rail with a cigarette in hand.  The last thing Jude wants is for Franklin to smell King when he sees her, but it looks like there's not going to be any way of escaping a conversation as Franklin catches sight of her and smiles.  Complicated emotions come with that smile, mostly because Jude's got to admit, he has some good bone structure for a guy with crunchy skin, and the anticipation of a promised future drink together is still very much a thing.  But, again, there's King to deal with.  And Punch, where-ever he stormed off to.

"You really can pick 'em," Franklin says as Jude approaches, King trailing after her with a horrified expression.  Jude sees Franklin look straight over her shoulder at the guy, and decides to get out in front of this.

"Be gentle with this guy, Franklin," she says, using his name just to show him she hasn't forgotten it.  "He had feral ghouls chasing him through the Commons, and I'm pretty sure he's not over it yet."

"S-Sorry," King stammers.  For what it's worth, he actually sounds apologetic.

It seems to be enough, anyway, as Franklin frowns in sympathy and accepts it with a nod.  "I hear ya, kid.  You don't got anything to worry about inside Goodneighbor, right?  That's why I'm here."

"Yeah, well, then how did a super mutant just walk on in?" King asks, partially joking.

"Because he's with Jude," Franklin replies.  He winks at her, and she grins back.

"Where'd Punch go, anyway?"

Franklin frowns, probably trying to decide if the name is for real.  "He was heading into town.  You should probably go catch him," he tells her, "He looked like he was gonna... well, you know.  The thing with his name."

Jude laughs.  "Oh, yeah, that's Punch all right.  He's probably heading to the Memory Den."

Franklin nods like he knows the score, which is probably true; word travels fast in Goodneighbor.  "Get this guy some pants, while you're there," he says, gesturing at King, who is starting to turn a weird shade of maroon.  "And maybe a rinse at the Rexford."

Jude takes King by the elbow and pulls him gently to get him moving again.  "What are you, some kinda mind-reader?" she asks, taking mock-offense to him guessing her plan so easily.

"I guess we'll find out when you meet me for a drink later," Franklin responds with a sly smile.

"I guess we will," she agrees, and finally she and King are moving again.  Franklin watches them go, and Jude is pretty smug about it until King clears his throat uncomfortably beside her.

"Um..." he begins, but he seems to think better of it when Jude shoots a glare in his direction.  "W-Where are we going, exactly?" he stammers instead, which is something Jude is way more inclined to respond to.  "The Memory Den?  What's that?"

"Not really sure about what the Den is all about, but that's where the doctor works."

"Oh, the one you told me about.  You never told me why you needed a doctor - were you sick?"

Jude rolls her eyes.  If he's not going to take a better guess than that, she's not going to fill him in on the real answer.  "Here we are," she says instead, as they cross the street to stand under the Memory Den's awning.  "Just follow me, and I'll do the introductions.  Amari's good people, you'll be fine."

At least King can follow directions well.  He sticks behind her and basically avoids looking directly at anybody, taking in the weird chairs in the Den as they weave past them, and ignoring the lady sitting there watching them pass.  He keeps two steps behind her on the stairs, giving Jude the distinct impression that he's waiting to make a quick escape.

When they reach the bottom, Jude finds Punch waiting for them outside the doors.  Well, waiting for her, anyway - he doesn't seem pleased to see King following along.  Jude wants to know so badly what his problem is, but she's not about to start that conversation while King is standing right there.  "Is she here?" she asks instead.  Punch nods, reaching out to push the door open before Jude can say anything more about it. 

Amari looks startled to see them, and then immediately relieved.  "You're back!" Amari exclaims, setting aside the clipboard she had been going over.  "Were you able to find the parts?  You apparently found _something_ ," she adds as she catches sight of King, frowning slightly at his surprise appearance.

"We found your parts, for sure," Jude says.  She pulls her pack around so that she can reach into it, pulling out the box.  "As for this guy..."  She hands over the package and points a thumb in King's direction, "We found him getting chased by ferals.  Um, all his clothes got stolen, and I sort of noticed you had..."

Amari catches on immediately, which isn't surprising.  She seems uncannily good at reading the room, and motions freely towards the box of clothes Jude had found earlier.  "Of course, I take clothing donations for these sorts of situations.  Help yourself."

King does just that, while Punch watches them all from just inside the door, wearing his irritation openly.  Jude decides to ignore him for the moment.  They'll have a chance to talk later, once they're done talking to Amari and Jude has taken some of her last caps to get them a room at the Rexford.  "In no time at all," Amari says, pulling Jude's attention back to her.  She's holding the box and looking at it with mild wonderment, which doesn't change as she looks up at Jude.  "It has been... difficult, lately, finding the help I've been accustomed to having.  I very much appreciate your assistance here."

"So, this makes us even, right?"

"To be honest, I may now owe _you_."  Amari seems to be considering something, giving Jude a careful look before proceeding.  "If you're ever interested in running more errands, please let me know.  I would be glad to pay you next time."

"You got it."  Jude gives Amari two thumbs up, looking briefly at King as he rifles through the box.  "So, Punch and I are gonna go put our feet up at the Rexford.  You think you've got it from here, King?"

King, who looks surprised that she's even talking to him still, waves a handful of ratty denim at her.  "I'm good.  Plus, your guard dog doesn't seem to like me much."

Punch growls at the comment, which just proves King's point.  Jude shrugs in agreement.  "Alright, well...  See you around, I guess," she says, adding a more considerate, "See you, doc," in Amari's direction.  Punch stares at her as she approaches, but she just gives him a blank look in return and brushes by him, forcing him to follow her as she heads up the stairs.

"Rexford?" Punch asks once they're out of earshot of the people in the Memory Den.  Jude pushes the door open and goes so far as to hold it for him, rolling her eyes as he fails to notice the gesture entirely.

"It's the hotel," she replies, pointing down the block at the hotel's sign.  "I figure we don't need to sleep on the street tonight."  And, since Punch only grunts non-comittally in response, Jude assumes he feels the same way.  "Besides, I need to clean myself up, and the hotel's the only place in Goodneighbor with running water.  I might go to the Third Rail later for a drink," she adds thoughtfully as they reach the hotel.  "I could use a lot of alcohol."

The woman at the front desk looks... extremely displeased at the sight of Jude entering with Punch, but she thankfully doesn't make a federal issue out of it.  She looks skeptically over them when Jude asks for a room, which is enough to remind Jude that she looks very strange asking for a single room with a guy like Punch following her around.  Still, the only thing she has to say about it is, "Rooms are ten caps a night."  It's cheaper than Jude had expected - maybe they can stay here longer than just one night.  If there's work to be had, they could even make the Rexford a regular thing.

Punch is silent the entire time, not even speaking as they climb the stairs to their room.  It isn't until Jude has closed the door and locked it against the outside world that the super mutant finally opens his mouth.

"What now?" he asks.  His grumpiness seems to have evened out now that they aren't hanging around King, leaving him somewhat more peacefully stoic.  It's funny how quickly Jude's taken to his solemn mood - enough to recognize it from general irritation and grumpiness.

Jude drops her bag and kicks it under the bed closest to the door.  She's glad that the lady downstairs hadn't made any weird assumptions about the situation, because if they had walked in to find only one bed, well...

"I dunno," Jude replies, derailing that train of thought as quickly as possible.  "Like I said, I'm going to wash up and head to the bar.  You can come with me, if you want."

Punch hesitates.  Standing by the door with only the clothes on his back, he almost looks uneasy.  Or... awkward?  Jude can't tell.  Do super mutants understand social cues enough to be awkward?  "After that?" he asks.

"Um... probably sleep?  Maybe see if there's any work in town - it's a lot cheaper than I thought here, maybe we can stay for more than just a night.  I don't wanna slum it on the streets, do you?"

Punch shakes his head.  "Not what I mean."

Jude frowns.  "You mean... like... what happens in general?  Between us?"

"Yes."

Truth be told, Jude hasn't put much thought into it.  After that brief moment of worry after Punch's arm was fixed up, Jude's tried hard not to think any more about it.  Part of the reason had simply been because she just doesn't _know_.  After all - she's got no plans, and she doesn't think he does, either.  The future is a completely blank slate, and she's not sure what she should tell him.  She doesn't even know what he'd want to hear.

Sitting down on the bed she's picked, Jude decides to give a shot at explaining it.  "I... didn't really think about it, when we left, and so far we've had things to keep us busy, but now...  I sort of just."  She looks around the room for something to keep her distracted as she pours her heart out, but there's nothing to look at except for Punch, who is staring at her with his customarily unreadable face.  "I just expected us to keep doing this.  Errands, or... odd jobs, or whatever it took.  That's - sort of all there _is_ to do, isn't there?"

Punch frowns.  "Don't know," he says.  She thinks he's agreeing with her, but she doesn't know for sure.  The fact that she isn't sure doesn't sit well with her, but what can she do about it?  If Punch decides he wants more than just errand running and surviving, then... well, then, what?

"Well," she tries, "What do _you_ want to do?  You can... you know, you can do anything you want.  You don't have to stick around Goodneighbor with me.  You're strong enough to do whatever you want to do - you don't need me giving you orders."

Punch stares at her as if she had suddenly started speaking in tongues.  She wonders if he thought he was stuck with her, or something, or if he'd just assumed she'd find some other way to keep him tagging along so that she could be protected.  He moves slowly, each step surprisingly measured, his blank face turning thoughtful.  Jude can't help but feel her stomach clench as he comes within grabbing range; even though she knows he probably isn't going to attack her, her body can't help but instinctively prepare for the possibility.  He looms over her, dried blood flaking off his knuckles and spattering his chest, smelling like asphalt and copper, and she has to crane her neck to meet his eyes.  He stops so close to her that her knees are touching his shins.  Her heart begins to pound at the proximity, probably loud enough for him to hear it.

"We are... friends," he says slowly.  He sounds the word out, having never used it before and probably not even really getting what it means, but that doesn't matter to her.  Just hearing him say it changes the rhythm of her racing heart, apprehension giving way to some strange cloud nine feeling.  "I can stay," he adds.  It sounds more like a suggestion than a fact when he says it.  For the first time, Jude realizes that Punch is even more out of his depth than she is.  Sure, befriending a super mutant is weird, but at least humans still comprehend shit like friendship.  For a super mutant, it must be a hell of a learning curve.

"You can stay.  See?  There's a bed for you and everything."  She gestures past him, but he doesn't take his eyes away from hers, and the motion falls flat as she drops her hand to her lap.  "I... have a lot of problems with super mutants," she hears herself say, and she wishes she could stop herself before she continues.  "Like King and ghouls, right?  But you're okay.  I... like working with you.  So I'm okay if you want to stick around."  She scowls, holding up a finger, "But you _can't eat people_.  At least not when I'm around, okay?  It seriously grosses me out."

Punch nods.  He takes a step back, and Jude can't explain the small rush of disappointment as he moves.  "Okay," he tells her.

"Okay," she repeats, grinning.  "So, you wanna come to the bar with me?"

Punch snorts, going to the opposite bed and sitting on it.  The springs groan and squeal, but the mattress is supported by a box that looks like it's been there for decades, so it doesn't give under him completely.  "Hey, don't knock it," she tells him, standing and taking stock of the room.  "Bars are where people go to meet other people, for work or, you know, whatever.  And if we're gonna stick around, we should look for work, so..."

"Work," Punch repeats, trying it out.  He doesn't look like he likes the idea too much, but Jude bets he knows it's more exciting than not having anything to do.  "Okay," he says.  She's surprised when he imitates her earlier posture, holding up one finger at her demandingly.  "No more King," he tells her.

"Oh my God, what is your deal with him?" she asks, laughing in disbelief.  She's not planning on seeing much of him, but King's pretty okay.  She's always been kind of chatty, so it's nice to have someone she can actually, well, _chat_ with.  Punch is great and all, but he isn't much of a conversationalist.

Punch looks displeased that she isn't immediately agreeing, which makes her feel maybe a little guilty.  After all, he'd been willing to follow her rule, no questions asked.  "He is annoying," Punch tells her, "I don't like him."

"He's not so bad," she replies, but at least now she can be sure it's nothing serious.  "I can't promise I won't see him around, or anything, that's just how settlements are.  But he definitely isn't coming out with us on any jobs we do in the Commonwealth.  Can we settle on that?"

"Not fair," Punch grunts, "But okay."

"You get an extra free rule I have to keep, then," she tells him, standing up and stretching.  "Look, I'm gonna clean myself up, and then you and I can go out.  We'll - it's what friends do, okay?  Going out, and drinking, and also hopefully finding work."

"Together," Punch says by way of agreement.  "I understand."

She grins at him.  She feels goofy, a little light on her feet, not exactly a Day Trip but pretty close to its sober counterpart.  "You and me together, Punch," she agrees.


	9. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that things have settled down, Punch and Judy decide it's time for a little R&R.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the reason this final chapter took 4+ months to finish? there was one set of dialogue that i couldn't figure out and therefore left, completely unedited, for fucking ever!!! how does that even happen???  
> well anyway, this is the end of the punch & judy train! i want to write more with them, and i hopefully will, but i neeeeeed to get some other fandom fic done before i come back here. thankfully, punch & judy are always around, ready to go on dumb adventures for me at the drop of a hat :)

Punch is waiting when Jude returns from the bathroom, having barely moved in the hour she'd been gone. She hadn't _expected_ it would take so long, but of course there had been a line, and with only two working fixtures, it had been a whole big issue that she's just glad to have put behind her. She's also glad to be properly clean for the first time in months. She _does_ feel bad for leaving Punch waiting for so long, though. She should have left him with some comics and her tin of Mentats - at least then he would have been entertained.

"Hey," she says as he squints in her direction. His nostrils flare as he takes a deep breath; she hopes he likes the smell of the soap, because she plans to stay acquainted with it. When he doesn't respond to her greeting any other way, she rolls her eyes. "When someone says hey, you should probably say hey back."

Punch scowls. "Then humans will talk to me," he says, visibly unenthusiastic.

Jude can't help but laugh. "Don't worry, it's your charming personality that'll keep 'em at bay." He doesn't get the joke, but it isn't worth elaborating on. "So, you wanna come with me to the bar? The beer's sort of cold and they got live music. Might be dull for a greenskin, but..."

"I will go," he says, not sounding so sure of himself. Jude figures it must be a shock to the systems, suddenly being thrown into human society like this. Hell, it's jarring for her, and she knows what to expect! Super mutants don't seem to enjoy generally nonviolent means of entertainment, and they _always_ seem to be working... so to speak. Jude bets they don't take a lot of time off to just hang out. She's not sure what they would even do if they _did_ take breaks.

"It'll be good for us," she says. "I'll have a drink, maybe _you'll_ have a drink, we'll find somebody who will pay us to help 'em, and..."

"We help them," Punch concludes. He doesn't sound very enthusiastic about that idea, sure, but it's still reassuring to know Punch is prepared to make this work.  At the very least, he's starting to understand the value of caps, which is all he really needs to know about society to get by.

"You might even _like_ helping people," she says. "Might not be a super mutant's first choice when it comes to activities, but... you know. It's got its perks."

"I know," he says without hesitation, rising to his feet. She knows he isn't trying, but in close quarters, it's hard for it to not feel like he's looming over her. "We will go find work."

She shoots a thumbs up in his direction, then turns for the door. She's not stupid; she isn't going to waste his proactive mood trying to fix herself up. She doesn't even have anything to fix herself _with_ , anyway - all the more reason to go out and earn some caps. She bets the general store here gets its hands on makeup all the time. Clothes too, probably, and other things that would make life a little bit more like it used to be. God, it would be so nice to have _stuff_ again!

Jude is so caught up in her thoughts that she nearly trips on the stairs, taking them two at a time to pass her clumsiness off as enthusiasm. Punch is the only one she has to convince, and he's poker-faced as usual, so she chalks it up as a win and leads the rest of the way with confidence.

They don't have far to go to reach the bar, but Punch manages to make a few bad impressions as they cross the street. He probably doesn't notice it when the people he glares at sneer in response, mostly because they do it behind his back, but Jude sees it all and figures pretty quickly that they're going to have to work on Punch's people skills. She can smooth out the initial fear of super mutants, but if he's going to be a dick to _everyone_ , they're not going to want their help out of spite.

All of that, though, is a problem for Jude tomorrow - Jude _tonight_ only has to focus on getting a little drunk and making her own impression on people. She deserves a break after everything she's been through, and she plans on making the most of it.

The ambivalent ghoul bouncer is standing watch inside the Third Rail. He barely looks twice at Punch as he follows Jude inside, and other than an uninterested warning to not start fights, they're allowed downstairs without comment. Jude isn't sure if it's because word travels fast around Goodneighbor, or if they just trust their gut instincts around here, but  nobody has called Punch out for being a free-roaming greenskin. Even when the reach the bar and Punch turns out to be heads taller than everybody else, nobody gives the situation more than a passing stinkeye. They're too busy living it up, Jude guesses - lots of alcohol, loud music and like-minded people tend to keep folks happy.

Punch looks lost as he sticks close to her side. He's clearly debating turning back up the stairs, more than a little overwhelmed by the amount of people and noise. Jude can't blame him - her own lived experiences don't quite stand up to the reality of a genuine _city_. Back with the Untamed, this sort of lively atmosphere could only be achieved through massive bloodshed, or kidnapping greenskins for sport. At the little co-op she'd lived in, living it up only came after a hard week's worth of work. The Third Rail, by comparison, feels like a civilized vision of yesteryear. Maybe that isn't great for super mutants, but Jude can definitely get used to this atmosphere.

On the other hand, the last time Punch was around this many humans, they'd been taking turns torturing him. He jolts when she puts a hand on his arm, whipping his head in her direction. "I've got your back, buddy," she says. He nods once in response. "Might be hard, but we'll find a spot."

Thankfully, Jude's luck is beginning to take a positive turn. There's a rundown booth in the back corner, opposite the stage, and Jude immediately sees Franklin sitting there with his confident grin pointed in her direction. He's got somebody sitting next to him in the booth, and it doesn't take Punch's unhappy grumbling to recognize King. That poor sap looks like a wet bed-sheet; Jude wonders what kind of parties _he_ might be used to, if this is terrifying him so much, then remembers that he's terrified of ghouls and figures that explains it.

"No," Punch tells her. Jude isn't sure if she should be annoyed that he's being so weird about King, or impressed that he knew what she was thinking before she said anything.

"Oh, c'mon," she says. "Franklin's nice, and he'd be a good connection to have, being in the Watch and all.  You might even like him." When that doesn't do much to convince Punch, she tries another angle. "Plus, King is terrified of ghouls. Don't you wanna see if he pisses himself again?"

Punch wrinkles his nose. "Already smells bad," he grumbles, but he takes the first step in the right direction. Jude grins, keeping a hand on his bicep as they make their way over.

"Look who I found shoving his foot down his throat in the bathroom," Franklin exclaims once they reach the booth. He's got his arm over King's shoulders, keeping him pinned in place while he squirms uncomfortably. He doesn't seem to be completely horrified by the ghoul touching him, and Jude is willing to bet the glasses littering the tabletop have something to do with it.

When King gets a load of Punch and Jude, his brick-red face lights up. "Hey, lady, hey, green guy," he says in greeting.

"Should have crushed your head," Punch mutters. Jude's the only one who hears it; she gives him a disapproving glare, but he meets her eyes without remorse. Ugh, _guys_. Human, greenskin or other, they're all the same.

"Hey, Punch," Franklin says, catching the super mutant's attention, "Do super mutants get drunk?"

"No," Punch replies, sitting heavily on the unoccupied seat without provocation. "No alcohol. No chems."

"No fun," Jude adds. It's Punch's turn to look disapprovingly as she settles in next to him, but she only responds by elbowing him for some more space. She doesn't miss King's look of desperation as she does it - no doubt he'd hoped she'd separate him from Franklin - but she ignores that, too. A guy can't live his entire life being afraid of ghouls. From the way Franklin is laying it on, he must be thinking similarly. Either that, or he's enjoying the guy's discomfort, which is admittedly pretty funny now that they're not being chased by ferals.

Waving to the Mr. Handy behind the bar and circling his finger to indicate another round, Franklin leans back into the booth seat, forcing King back with him despite his vaguely terrified expression. "You won't hear me complain about a cheap date," he says, waggling his hairless brow at Punch, who doesn't understand enough about facial expressions to get the joke, much less the innuendo. "Too bad, though. I've always wanted to see a greenskin get shit-faced."

Punch scowls. Jude almost thinks he's taken offense, but there's no tension in his posture, and his neutral tone might as well be considered upbeat as he replies, "Me too."

Jude laughs, pleasantly surprised that Punch is capable of kidding around. Franklin takes it less graciously, laughing hard enough to start hacking; King uses the distraction to worm out of Franklin's grasp, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the table. It sounds like a good idea, so Jude grabs one too, waiting to light it until after the robot brings their drinks over with belligerent table service. A round of beer is easy to follow up with another round, and then a shot or two of whiskey. Punch surprises all of them when he drinks everything put in front of him, but even as Jude starts to tip past tipsy, Punch stays as sober as a rock. It must take a _lot_ of alcohol to get a mutant fucked up - that, or those drinks were wasted caps.

"I wasn't too sure about you bringin' a greenskin around at first," Franklin eventually tells Jude, "But this one turned out all right." He swivels his head to give Punch an appreciative once-over. "Glad you made it out of Amari's," he says.

Punch nods once, then again, then looks to Jude for an assist. She mouths "thank you," exaggeratedly enough that King, nearly blacking out, mouths it back in confusion, but Punch turns out to not be great at lip-reading. He turns back to Franklin and says, "Me too," which is good enough.

King stares at Punch's missing arm like he hadn't noticed it before, then opens his big dumb mouth. "Oh, it's because you lost an _arm_!" he exclaims, as if just getting the punchline of a bad joke. Jude rolls her eyes, catches Punch's glare, and tries to come up with a way to smooth things over before Punch decides to crush King's head for real.

Franklin comes to her rescue, slapping King upside the head. "You blind or just stupid?" he asks, probably with less malice than Punch would've liked.

"Kind of both," King admits, "Those fuckers took my glasses, on top of my clothes, chems, and dignity."

Punch frowns. He looks down at Jude, but before she can figure out what he's looking for, he turns his critical gaze towards King. "Can't see good," he grunts, as if that explains everything.

"And stupid," King adds, jerking back in surprise as Punch actually laughs at his self-deprecation, a deep and throaty chuckle. Jude had never considered the idea that super mutants could actually laugh, and it startles Jude into laughing a little too.

"Come on, that's mean," King pouts, but Jude can't stop, and she definitely can't help herself as Punch's grimace of a smile briefly reappears.

"Sorry," Jude giggles. "Really, you're, uh... not stupid."

"Stupid enough to mess around with gunners," Franklin points out.

"That's true," Jude agrees.

"Hey! I'm... wow." King manages to stand up for just a moment before he goes gray-faced and sits back down. "Woo, I don't wanna move like that again."

"They charge ya double if you puke in the bar," Franklin says, "So get up to the bathroom if that's what you're gonna do."

"I... Hgkh. Mmhmm." King, going from gray to a more "irradiated olive" green, covers his mouth with his hand and staggers from the booth. He waves a hand like he might come back before making a beeline for the exit. Jude thinks he's probably not gonna come back.

"Pathetic," Punch grunts.

"Tell me about it," Franklin sighs. "Kid's a mess. Good thing he found you two. The way he tells it, he was seconds away from being mutilated by a pack of ferals."

Punch sneers like he smells bad meat. Jude rolls her eyes. "Punch doesn't like him much. He's okay, but I don't wanna be the one to put him on his feet again. I'm the only mess I want to deal with right now."

Franklin chuckles. "Don't worry about that. Goodneighbor takes care of its people. So long as he plays by the rules, he'll get it together." He raises his glass, giving his whiskey a contemplative look before swallowing it back and setting the glass upside down on the tabletop. "You two planning on sticking around?" he asks, looking at Jude like he had his drink. His dark gaze makes her heart flutter in her ribcage, and she stumbles way too obviously for an answer that isn't a drunken pickup line.

"Uh, I think so," she answers, hating how bland it sounds as soon as she says it. "I mean... I don't have a lot of other options, and, uh, rent's cheap at the Rexford..."

Punch, staring at her with furrowed brows, answers with a lot more decisiveness. "We are staying," he says, after he's squinted long enough. He turns his gaze to Franklin, who doesn't flinch under the scrutiny, then gives them each a confident smile.

"I know people who need extra hands," Franklin says. "If you guys need work, let me know, I'll see what I can find. Your best bet's asking Daisy. She's always got something in the wings. You'll wanna get to know the schedules around here. Keep your head low for the first couple of days so people get used to you. Punch is gonna be a hell of a hard sell for some people, and you're probably gonna get a formal meeting with the Mayor next time he rolls into town. If you see that tricorner-wearing sonofabitch coming your way, just remember that he's got your best interests at heart. Well. He's got _Goodneighbor_ 's best interests at heart. Long as you're part of the neighborhood, you'll be fine."

Jude is way too drunk to keep up with all of that, but she gets... well, she gets most of the gist of it. Franklin could probably give her a lot more information, but he can clearly tell she's not in any mood to absorb information. "You keep being so helpful, you might never get rid of me," Jude says with a laugh.

"Maybe that's the point," Franklin replies. He winks at Punch, who looks confused and irritated at the attention, and slides out of the booth. "What can I say? I'd like to see what Goodneighbor's like with you two around."

"Here's hoping we don't disappoint."

"Nah, I got my expectations set low." He pauses for a moment before pulling on his jacket, frowning curiously at Jude, and then grins wide. "I've got to get back on shift soon, so I'm gettin' outta here. You talk to Daisy tomorrow, alright? I'll make sure she treats you nice."

"What a sweetheart," Jude coos somewhat sarcastically, but she can't help the way her cheeks turn red at the special treatment. "Thanks, Franklin. We owe you."

"Don't mention it. People will think I've gotten soft." Franklin directs a finger in Punch's direction, drawing the mutant's attention. "Keep an eye on yourself, buddy. You only got one arm left to spare."

Punch grunts nonverbally in response. Franklin seems to get it, whatever _it_ is, and shrugs his shoulders. When he takes his leave, Jude counts two ( _two!_ ) backward glances, and she catches each one with a smug grin. It's only once he disappears upstairs that Jude lets out a loud belch and drops her head to the tabletop.

"Oh, boy, Punch, I think I drank too much."

"Pathetic," Punch responds, but he doesn't sound quite as mean about it as he had with King. Maybe that's just her imagination, though. Jude turns her head to look up at him, and he stares down at her with the strangest expression she's ever seen. Her brain, cloudy and clogged with century-old liquor, tries to find something to say, but nothing comes to mind. She does wonder, though, what's got him looking at her like some kind of complicated lock.

"Time to leave?" Punch asks her. She realizes she's been slowly losing consciousness while staring at him, and he's probably not interested in waiting out a nap right now, so she struggles to get upright once again. Once she does that, climbing out of the booth seems like an easy enough task; it's when she's standing, Punch right beside her, that her balance starts to give out. She's surprised when Punch's hand weighs down her shoulder, grounding her and keeping her upright as she slowly leads the way back up the stairs, past the still-disinterested bouncer, and out into the street.

It's colder than it was in the bar, but it's refreshing. The entire street seems peaceful and quiet compared to what Jude's used to. She finds some energy from the slight breeze, stretching her arms over her head and sighing in relief. "Not a bad night. We did pretty good for ourselves today, Punch."

Punch hums thoughtfully, maybe in agreement. Jude thinks about her tin of Mentats back in the room. "Better than before," he says. If Jude had any doubts that the Untamed camp has been on Punch's mind tonight, she definitely doesn't now.

"It's only gonna get better from here," Jude tells him, patting him gently before moving in the direction of the Rexford. "I promise."

Punch hums again and follows her. When the alcohol gives her vertigo, he's there for her to fall against for balance, and he doesn't make a big deal of her dizziness. Jude likes him watching out for her, but she hopes someday she'll get to see if they can manage to get him drunk. She's not going to rush it, though - she has plenty of time to find out what kind of person Punch is, and what kind of person she might be, too. Jude had never considered that befriending a greenskin would be what it took to find a new life, but she is definitely not going to complain. Together, Jude is pretty sure the two of them will be unstoppable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thank you for reading my original Fallout 4 fanfiction! :) Comments & kudos are always appreciated, and please feel free to come hit me up on tumblr or twitter if you ever wanna chat about fandom stuff. Thank you, and let your spurs jingle-jangle-jingle for all eternity!


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